


A Magnetic Attraction

by Eclaire-de-Lune (RoyalHeather)



Series: A Magnetic Attraction [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, At least one The Princess Bride reference, Canonical Character Death, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Past Character Death, Past Relationship - Caleb/Astrid, Teacher-Student Relationship, That's not what office hours are for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2020-12-14 06:46:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 59,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21011486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoyalHeather/pseuds/Eclaire-de-Lune
Summary: Professor Caleb Widogast has enough to worry about when the new semester starts. With a recently-broken heart, a tight budget, and pressure from the administration, he wasn't expecting to become invested in Jester Lavorre, daughter of a famous movie star. But the more time he spends with her, the more he finds himself captivated by her, against his better judgment...After the death of a close friend, Jester Lavorre feels lonelier than ever. What started out as a crush on her cute physics professor has started to become something more, a hunger for someone who understands her and wants her the way she desires. Can she find that in Caleb, or will this forbidden romance end in disaster for them both?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have never taken a physics class in my life. Apologies in advance.

The knock at Caleb’s office door does not lift his eyes from the PHYS 405 syllabus on his desk in front of him. “Come in,” he mutters, debating whether to push the midterm up a week to give the students more time to prepare for the final, and stabs his fork into his salad and shovels a bite into his mouth.

The door opens and the salad turns to ash in Caleb’s mouth as Astrid enters. Everything about her is sharp and slick, from her short brown hair to her eyebrows to her matching jacket and skirt. “What are you working on?” she says.

Caleb swallows down his food with difficulty. “Syllabus,” he says.

Raising her eyebrows, Astrid returns, “The semester starts in two days, you’re not done with those yet?”

Clearing his throat, Caleb draws his chair up and folds his arms on the desk, watching her. He’s still learning how to navigate this, the new bitter, brittle thing between them. He’d hoped winter break’s absence would ease the sting of their newly broken relationship, but it seems it hasn’t. “What do you want?”

“Physics 110, huh?” Astrid leans against the doorframe. “What’d Ikithon promise you to get you to teach _that_? Tenure, finally?”

Caleb manages a tight smile, tapping his pencil on the desk. If only that were on the table. “And are you stuck with Chemistry 101, or did you wiggle your way out of that one?”

“No, no, we’ve got a new adjunct or something doing that.” Head cocked, Astrid regards him seriously. “I’ve been hearing a thing or two, so I took a peek at the registration for Physics 110. Have you looked at the roster?”

“Briefly, why?”

“The Lavorre girl is in it.”

Frowning, Caleb runs his mind back over the list of one hundred and eighty-four students. He remembers the name Jester Lavorre, but he doesn’t have a face or any other information to attach to it. “Who’s the Lavorre girl?”

“Seriously?” laughs Astrid. “You don’t know?”

“Obviously, or I would not be asking –”

“God, somehow I’m not surprised,’” says Astrid, pulling away from the doorframe. “Look up ‘Marion Lavorre.’ That should be illuminating.” And she walks away, having the decency to shut the door again behind her.

Caleb groans quietly and rubs at his face under his glasses, although all things considered, it could have gone much worse. Sighing, he flips open his laptop and searches Marion Lavorre, opening her Wikipedia article.

** _Marion Lavorre_ ** _ (born 18 July 1975), also known as **Ruby Cee**, is a Ukrainian-American actress and singer. Beginning her career in pornographic acting, she transitioned to TV and movie roles and was the highest paid actress in the world in 2010 and 2014. In 2015, Lavorre was chosen as People’s Most Beautiful Woman…_

His phone buzzes in his pocket and Caleb pulls it out to texts from Astrid.

_Jester Lavorre is Marion Lavorre’s daughter_

_Rumor has it there’s a big donation coming Richmond’s way once she graduates_

_Problem is, she failed physics her freshman year, so now she has to retake it as a senior_

_But she needs to pass that to graduate_

Stomach sinking, Caleb texts back.

_Why are you telling me this?_

_I just thought you’d find it interesting_

_Maybe go easy on her. Offer extra credit or something_

Caleb snorts, offended.

_I never offer extra credit._

Astrid sees his text, but doesn’t respond. Tossing his phone on the desk, Caleb returns to the PHYS 405 syllabus. He’s not moving the midterm up, he decides. The students have plenty of time as it is. This is an advanced level course; if they can’t handle the pressure they shouldn’t be taking the class.

\--

“Beau!” shrieks Jester in delight, and pulls her into a hug despite the dufflebag slung over Beau’s shoulder. Beau grunts in pleased surprise, returning the hug with her free arm. “You’re back!”

“You knew I was coming, I texted you,” grumbles Beau, but her eyes smile, and she stamps slushy snow off her boots before entering their apartment. “Oh shit, cookies?”

Jester’s been baking all afternoon, nominally to welcome Beau back but really because she was desperate to fill the empty apartment with warmth and happy smells. The high white ceilings and wide French windows of the apartment are beautiful, but after a full day alone since she came back from winter break, they had started feeling more than a little cold. “Yah,” she says, grabbing a cookie from the plate on the table, and plunks down in a chair and stuffs the cookie in her mouth. “They’re gingerbread.”

Dropping her dufflebag, Beau goes into the kitchen, and returns with a cookie in one hand and another in her mouth. As she takes a bite, her eyes widen. “These are good,” she says. “You’re getting better.”

Pleased, Jester beams. “Thanks.”

“Oh!” Putting her cookies down, Beau starts digging in her jeans pocket. “I did some gig work over the break, I can pay your mom back for some of the rent –”

“No no no, don’t worry about it!” says Jester. “You don’t have to, it’s fine –”

“I want to –”

“_It’s fine._” Jester takes another bite of cookie and glares at Beau. “It is.”

Rolling her eyes, Beau hooks her heel around a chair leg to drag it towards her and drops into the chair. Jester looks at Beau closely, noticing circles under her eyes and a tired drag to her lips, and a strange pinchedness to her cheeks. “How was your holiday?” she asks quietly.

Beau swallows down cookie with a sour look on her face. “Sucked,” she says. Chewing the inside of her cheek, she adds after a moment, “Dad kicked me out. For good, this time. I think he’s actually writing me out of the will.”

“Oh,” says Jester softly, and her heart hurts for Beau. “I’m sorry.”

Beau shrugs. “I knew it was coming at some point.” Her tone is determinedly nonchalant. “Still sucks, though.”

Scooting her chair over until she’s next to Beau, Jester links her arm through Beau’s and tilts her head onto her shoulder. Beau sighs and leans back into her, her chin brushing the top of Jester’s head. “Been a long winter,” she mutters.

Jester thinks about Molly, and she’s sure Beau does too, but neither of them bring him up. “It will be better, now, that we’re all back together,” she says, determinedly bright. “You’ll see.”

Beau huffs out a rueful laugh. “Yeah.”

\--

When PHYS 110 rolls around on Monday morning at 10 a.m., Caleb is too distracted to worry about Jester Lavorre. Unexpected car trouble means he’s a hundred and fifty dollars under budget for the month, and while he can make some of that up with savings, he’d like not to eat into his entire emergency fund. Which means he has to choose between food and coffee until his paycheck comes at the end of the week. He’s leaning towards coffee.

Reaching the lectern, he unslings his leather satchel from his shoulder, only vaguely paying attention as chattering students file into the rows of seats. This time it was the headlights on the car, and Caleb’s grateful the problem was just a faulty socket and not a short in the wiring somewhere. He gets his first presentation slide up on the projector and clips the mic to his jacket lapel.

Clearing his throat, he waits for the chatter to die down and students to settle themselves. There’s a science department lunch reception on Wednesday, maybe they’ll let him take home the leftover sandwiches. “Welcome to Physics 110,” Caleb announces, gathering up his stack of printed syllabi and class guidelines, and handing them to the student at the end of the row closest to him, a blond fraternity-looking sort. “Take one and pass these down, please,” he says. “My name is Professor Caleb Widogast, yes, this is my real accent, yes, I am originally from Germany, no, you may not make any jokes about Albert Einstein.” Scattered laughs ripple across the room. “This class is meant to be an introduction to the principles of both science in general and physics in particular, giving you a solid base for further learning –”

The door at the back of the classroom creaks open and a young woman slips in, grimacing apologetically as she tumbles into the closest open seat. She has a wide, heart-shaped face with freckles dusted over her nose, her black hair cut into a shoulder-length bob with bangs and two small buns coiled above her ears. Shaking out the full skirt of her knee-length blue dress, the young woman adjusts her winter coat and plops her messenger bag down on the desk, pulling out a sleek silver laptop.

“– and as such, punctuality is essential,” Caleb continues blandly. “Even if you do not intend to pursue science any further.”

The young woman taps a pen against her pursed lips, eyeing Caleb.

“I do not intend to spend _too_ much time on the syllabus, but there are a couple of important points I want to cover,” and Caleb proceeds with the rest of the class. Lunch rolls around and he dismisses class with a first assignment of returning their signed copy of the syllabus to him as well as reading the introduction to their textbooks; students scatter in a bustle of activity and hunger. Caleb envies their energy.

One student doesn’t depart immediately, however; Caleb looks up from packing his laptop in his satchel to see the young woman in the blue dress hovering by the doorway, watching him. “Can I help you?” Caleb calls up at her, unclipping the microphone.

Beaming, the young woman sashays down the stairs towards him, skirt swishing around her knees. “Hi,” she says, holding out a hand. “I’m Jester.”

So _this_ is Jester Lavorre. Now that Caleb is looking for it, he can see the resemblance to the glamorous Marion Lavorre in the shape of her eyes and nose, in the curve of her slightly-bucktoothed smile. “Hello, Jester. What can I do for you?”

“Nothing.” She smiles up at him with wide violet-blue eyes. “I just wanted to introduce myself.” Her voice has a distinctly Eastern European cadence.

“Ah.” Finished packing up, Caleb pulls on his coat and hoists the satchel strap over his shoulder. “Well, it is very nice to meet you. Now, if you will excuse me…”

“Of course.” Jester steps back, letting Caleb pass her to leave the room. When he gets to the door, though, he holds it politely open, and she trips through with a smile at Caleb.

Maybe she thinks that by ingratiating herself with him, she’ll have a better chance of passing. Hitching his bag up higher, Caleb ignores his growling stomach and turns not down the hallway towards the nearest dining hall, but the opposite direction towards his office. He’s got PHYS 405 this afternoon, and he might tweak the syllabus again after all.

\--

“I’m going to climb him like a tree,” pronounces Jester, accompanying Beau through the dining hall.

Beau’s eyebrows arch as she glances between her phone and where she’s walking, thumbs tapping out a message. “Who?”

“Professor Caleb Widogast.” Jester pronounces each syllable of his name distinctly.

Stopping short, Beau pulls a disgusted face. “Isn’t he like, fifty?”

“_No,_” says Jester, entering the mill of the cafeteria. The delicious smell of pizza fills her nostrils, and she checks the dessert station to see what’s being offered: cupcakes and mini tarts today. “He only graduated like ten years before I did, he can’t be more than thirty-five –”

“How do you know when he graduated?”

Jester, unabashed, says, “I checked his faculty profile on the website.”

“Gross.”

“You’re gross.” Jester gets in line for the sandwich station; Beau darts off and returns five minutes later with a protein shake and boxed salad in hand. “Who are _you_ hooking up with next?”

“Not my _physics_ _professor_, Jesus.”

Jester huffs, pointing out bread and cheese and sliced turkey and tomato and chipotle mayo for the sandwich station server to put together. “You would totally date a professor if she was like, really hot, and she had this cool shaved head and she was tough, but also really cool, and –”

Spots of color rise to Beau’s cheeks, and she mutters, “Listen, I’m not saying I wouldn’t.” Jester giggles to herself, pleased the imaginary person she constructed is so on the mark. “But Widogast? Really?”

Shrugging, Jester retrieves her completed sandwich. She can articulate to herself why she likes Professor Widogast so much – tousled ginger hair, strong nose, something about his piercing blue eyes both gentle and weary – but she doesn’t think Beau would really get it. “I just think he’s cute.”

Beau doesn’t look remotely convinced, but she drops the topic as they search for seating in the bustling dining hall. “Oh, look, there’s Fjord,” she says, and shouts across the brick-walled room, waving frantically. “HEY! FJORD!”

The black-haired young man sitting by himself at a table turns and frowns, looking around for whoever’s calling his name. When he sees Beau and Jester, he smiles and waves back.

Jester’s heart does a happy little jump; she hasn’t seen Fjord since he went back to Dallas for the holidays. Winding her way through the circular tables, she reaches Fjord as he gets out of his seat to fold her into a hug, careful of her sandwich plate in one hand. “Hey, Jester, good to see you again.”

“Hi!” she chirps, beaming up at Fjord. “How was your break?”

Fjord’s smile doesn’t meet his eyes, and Jester’s heart sinks a little as she remembers the past month wasn’t good for any of them. “Not bad,” says Fjord. “Yours?”

“All right.” Jester stays determinedly cheerful.

Beau slinks up and lightly punches Fjord in the bicep. “Hey, man.”

“Hey.” His grin at her is a little more genuine. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks, it’s good to be back.” She sighs heavily as they all sit down, kicking her heels up on an empty chair. “Anyone heard from Yasha? When’s she visiting again?”

Through a mouthful of sandwich, Jester says, “I invited her over for Christmas but I never heard anything back.”

“Damn. Hope she turns up.”

\--

The door to Caleb’s apartment closes behind him and he sighs, letting the metaphorical weight he’s been carrying on his shoulders all day sink to the floor along with his satchel. Meowing loudly, Frumpkin trots up to wind around Caleb’s legs. “Hello, Frumpkin,” mutters Caleb with a smile, shuffling forward in an attempt to not trip over his cat. “Did you miss me?”

“Maow,” says Frumpkin.

“Do you want your dinner?”

“_Maow_.”

Caleb flicks the light on, entering the kitchenette. The renovated garage he’s renting doesn’t have any interior walls apart from the bathroom, so just a screen partitions his bedroom area from the rest of the space. On the kitchen windowsill, two potted herbs struggle valiantly for life; Caleb checks the soil but it’s damp enough, he’s not sure what’s wrong with them. The irony that he only started trying to grow them because his therapist said it would be good for him to nurture a living thing is not lost on him.

Brushing up against his calves and arching his back, Frumpkin is insistent about his status as a living thing that needs food. “Yes, yes,” says Caleb, opening the fridge and taking out the half-full can of cat food. “Hold your horses, it is coming.”

He gets Frumpkin his dinner and settles in to work on his lecture notes for the rest of the week. But the night is late, and the yellow lamplight starts to blur in his eyes, and halfway through his preparation for PHYS 315, his attention starts to wander. Back to his conversation with Astrid, and Jester Lavorre.

The promises of donations don’t matter to him, it’s not like he’ll see a penny of that money anyway. But they matter to Ikithon and the other university deans, and if Jester doesn’t graduate and that money doesn’t come through, they’ll pin it on him anyway. Caleb scrubs at his face with one hand, tired eyes screwed up tight. Maybe it won’t be an issue, he tells himself. Maybe Jester Lavorre will turn out to be an amazing or at least passable student and she’ll get through the class on her own merit.

But he knows, deep down, that he will not be so lucky.

\--

Jester curls up under her covers, still missing home a little, moonlight shining faintly through the sheer curtains. She can hear Beau snoring gently through the wall. She would like to drift off to sleep with pleasant fantasies of Professor Widogast, but instead who comes to mind is Molly, the night he died. He was so confident, she thinks miserably, hugging herself. So carefree.

And for a few minutes, Jester lets herself cry silently, pulling her knees up to her chest as her tears seep into the pillow. And despite Beau in the other room, Jester suddenly feels very alone, and more than anything she wishes for a pair of arms around her.

But despite how hard she imagines them, she never feels like they’re there.


	2. Chapter 2

“So,” says Essek, sliding around mail cubby to come up beside Caleb as he pours himself a cup of coffee from the pot in the department teachers’ lounge. “First week of the semester, over. How is 110 treating you?”

Caleb deadpans at Essek, who suppresses a smirk over the rim of his own mug. “So you are the one who got me roped into that class.”

Shrugging, Essek says, “Well, I don’t have time to teach it anymore, now that Tversky’s not teaching and I’ve picked up his advanced classes.” As ever, he is impeccably dressed, today in fitted gray slacks and a purple silk shirt that accentuates the richness of his dark brown skin. “So I guess that leaves some of the basics to you.”

“Mm.” Eyes narrowed, Caleb gulps down coffee. “Do you remember the 110 class you had three years ago? Either semester?”

Cocking his head, Essek leans against the side of the mail cubbies. “Vaguely. Why?”

“I have a repeat student that I am curious about.”

“Ahhh.” Glancing around to see if anyone else is in the room, Essek grins and says, “You are referring to Jester Lavorre?”

Caleb takes another swig of coffee, darkly sweet and bitter and just cool enough not to burn. “Ja.”

“Yes, there have been rumors swirling about her.” Essek sighs, long fingers tapping on the white ceramic of his mug that’s only a few shades paler than his bleached hair. “Donation this, graduation that…”

“Do you think I should?” asks Caleb. “Go easy on her?”

Raising an eyebrow, Essek says, “I’m surprised you’re even considering that.”

“I know,” growls Caleb into his coffee. “But if she fails, and Ikithon decides to take his disappointment out on me…”

Essek makes a clicking sound of sympathy. “That is a tough decision, my friend.”

“You’re telling me.”

\--

Marion’s phone rings, and rings, and goes to voicemail. “Hi, Mom!” says Jester, lying on her back on her bed and kicking her heels up in the air. “I just got home from class today, it was super good, I still don’t really understand physics but I’m trying really hard, I know it’s important, even though it’s kind of stupid? Like, I’m an art major, why do I even need to know physics? But also the professor is really cute, I think you’d like him, he always seems like he’s tired, you know? Like he hasn’t had enough sleep. But he explains everything and he answers everyone’s questions even if they’re really dumb and so far he hasn’t actually assigned us a lot of homework, which is good because I have _so_ many reports I have to do for my other classes and I haven’t even started on _any_ of them and –” The voicemail cuts her off with a sharp beep.

Sighing, Jester hangs up her phone and lets it fall to the floral-print bedspread, staring up at the white ceiling as shadows of tree branches shift over it. She’s trying in Physics class, she really is. She knows it’s the last GE she has to complete before she can graduate. She’s trying _so hard,_ but the basic math class she took was difficult enough as it is, and there’s something about physics that just doesn’t make sense to her.

“You should go in for _office hours,_” says Beau, with a suggestive eyebrow waggle, when Jester voices her worries to her later. “Then he could really give you some _help –_”

Chin propped on her hand, Jester considers, swinging her legs under the dining table of their apartment. Beau winces as the heel of Jester’s shoe catches her in the shin. “I could…”

“Seriously, though, even if you just go for some extra help it’s not a big deal.” Beau frowns, chopsticks hovering above her bowl of ramen. “Have you seriously never gone in for office hours before? For any class?”

Jester shrugs, circling her own chopsticks through her bowl to tangle up the remaining noodles. “I never had to before.”

“I mean, it’s not that hard, you just walk in when they have hours and… ask for help.” Beau gestures vaguely with her chopsticks. “Or, you know. ‘Help.’”

“ ‘Hello, Professor Widogast,’” says Jester, deepening her voice to be sultry and leaning forward on the table so her breasts push forward. “ ‘I was wondering if –’”

“Wow, no, okay, definitely don’t do that,” says Beau. “You’re flirting, not acting in a porno.”

Frowning, Jester leans back in her chair. “How do _you_ flirt, then?”

Supremely unimpressed with herself, Beau shrugs, arms folded. “I dunno, usually I just make awkward eye contact and tell them they’re hot, and that does the trick.”

Jester considers. “I don’t think that’ll work here.”

“Yeah, probably not.” Beau sighs.

“Why are you even helping, anyway, you think that this is gross –”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still do,” says Beau. “But as your roommate and best friend I am spiritually obligated to help you get whatever dick you want, even if it makes me throw up a little.”

A sudden giggle escapes Jester, and for a moment she is intensely glad that she has Beau as a friend. “I bet my mom has some tips,” she says thoughtfully, and slurps up a noodle. Flecks of broth hit her in the nose, and she flinches.

Beau raises her eyebrows and says, “You’re going to ask your mom for help seducing your physics professor?”

“I’m not _seducing_ him, okay?” Jester scowls. “I’m just…”

“You’re trying to get him to sleep with you, that’s seducing.”

Cheeks flushing, Jester protests, “I’m not!” even though the thought sends a pleased shiver through her stomach. Beau’s expression clearly says she doesn’t believe her. “I mean, if he _does_ want to, I’m not going to say no, but I don’t want to make him feel like he _has_ to…”

Beau raises her eyebrows higher.

“Stop it,” says Jester, petulant, and flicks a piece of green onion at Beau, who deflects it easily. “Maybe I do want to sleep with him, I don’t know…”

“Well, maybe you should figure that out.”

\--

Once again, after Caleb dismisses class, Jester stays behind, coming up to the lectern as Caleb packs his things into his satchel. “Professor Widogast?” she asks, voice high-pitched with uncertainty.

“Ja?” he says, and smiles at her a little, to be reassuring.

Jester’s answering smile is dazzling, warm and bright as a sunbeam, and Caleb’s mood lifts in answer. “I was wondering if I could come by later, for some extra help? I just don’t understand the whole thing about relativity…”

“Yes, of course,” says Caleb, slightly bemused, zipping his satchel up. “My office hours are in the syllabus, come by any time you are free and I will be there…”

“Oh, okay. Great!” chirps Jester. “Thanks!” And as she turns and leaves the room, she brushes past Astrid, who has appeared in the doorway, with an inquisitive look.

Sighing, Caleb slowly pulls on his coat, unhappily aware of the ragged cuffs. “Hello, Astrid,” he says.

Astrid nods back after the direction Jester departed in. “Is that her?”

Eyes narrowed slightly, Caleb nods.

“Hm.” Shrugging, Astrid pulls away from the door. “Just curious.” And she leaves, legs moving like knives, before Caleb can say anything else. Not that he wanted to.

Heaving a sigh, Caleb shrugs on his satchel strap and trudges out of the room, leaving it vacant for the next class. Regret sits leaden in his stomach, killing any appetite he might have. He had been so sure of himself during his and Astrid’s final argument, but now, the accusations that he flung out – that she was a stooge of Dean Ikithon, that she only cared about herself, that she was poisonous – seem not only melodramatic but self-absorbed. Between replaying the fight in his head and trying to mentally plan out the rest of his week, Caleb is so preoccupied he doesn’t realize he’s gone in the wrong direction until he walks out the doors at the end of the hall and out into the crisp air, the sky a robin’s-egg blue and light snow dusted over the quad, leafless trees reaching gray fingers upwards.

A sparkling laugh catches his attention, and he looks over at the trio of students crossing the quad. The laughter is clearly from Jester, wrapped in her cream wool coat, but the other two students beside her are unfamiliar to Caleb: a lean, deeply tan young woman with an undercut and a topknot, whose upper lip curls in a sneer; and a Hispanic-looking young man with a distinctive scar down the side of his face and the satisfied grin of someone who just told a good joke.

As he watches, Jester looks his way and catches his eye, smiling tentatively. Both the young man and woman with her look at him too, and Caleb quickly turns, walking off in the opposite direction from them. Hands in his pockets, he hunches his shoulders with the uncomfortable feeling that all three are now discussing him. Jester giggles again, her laugh bubbling up behind him, and Caleb scowls and walks faster.

His disgruntled mood fades gradually as he returns to his office and delves into his newest book from the library, this one a history of the British occupation of Pakistan. It’s fascinating, if somewhat depressing, and he’s engrossed enough that the knock on his half-open door catches him slightly by surprise. “Yes?” says Caleb, and looks up to find Jester peering around his door. “Oh. You are by earlier than I thought.”

Wrinkling her nose in contrition, Jester says, “You said any time in your office hours, and they start at one today…”

“Is it one already?” Caleb checks his watch, careful not to push his shirt sleeve up, and sure enough it is. “My apologies. Come in, sit down.”

Jester sits herself down on the chair in front of his desk, looking around the office, and Caleb considers it through her eyes – walls bare, a single nondescript lamp, university-issued desk and two chairs, but the two bookcases overflowing with books in various stages between new and battered. A bit of a scholar’s den, he has to admit. “You said you are having difficulty with relativity?”

Groaning, Jester pushes her face into her hand. “It just doesn’t make _sense,_ practically, how it works –”

For about fifteen minutes, Caleb attempts to explain it to her, first breaking down the concepts and then when that doesn’t work, trying a couple different metaphors. But it clearly just doesn’t click for Jester, and she gets more and more frustrated as she tries to understand but can’t.

Taking pity on her, Caleb leans forward a little as Jester slumps with her chin in her hand, her brow scrunched up. “Listen, Jester,” he says, and her despondent look perks up a little. “I should not be telling you this –” _so why are you?_ a little voice in his head says “– but this first unit is only on the history of physics. You won’t need to understand the theory of relativity for the test, just who developed it and when.”

“Really?” says Jester, and the smile that spreads across her face is strangely gratifying. “Oh, _phew._”

Caleb can’t help smiling back. “Is there anything else you have questions about?”

Smoothing out her dress, Jester sighs, “Oh, I’m sure there will be – is that your cat?” Her voice pitches sharply upwards in delight.

She points at the three photos of Frumpkin Caleb has slid under his clear plastic desk protector, along with a picture of his parents: one of Frumpkin curled up and asleep, one of him in the window watching birds, and a portrait shot that Caleb is particularly proud of. “Ja,” says Caleb, his lips curling fondly. “He is a good cat.” Something about the longing way Jester looks at the pictures prompts him to ask, “Do you have any pets?”

“No, my apartment building doesn’t allow it,” she says. “I have a puppy but I had to leave him back home with my mom. Oh, and a ferret.”

“What’s your dog’s name?”

“Nugget,” says Jester wistfully.

Caleb snorts, and Jester’s eyebrows fly up. “What?” she says.

Shrugging, Caleb responds, “It’s an odd name for a dog, is all.”

“It’s a _perfect_ name for a dog,” says Jester, but she laughs. “Here, let me show you –” and she pulls out her phone and scrolls through until she can show Caleb a picture of what looks suspiciously like a cross between a German Shepherd and an African wild dog, still very much a puppy with long legs and oversized ears and paws. “He knows all sorts of tricks.” Caleb makes the appropriate admiring noise.

As Jester takes the phone back, her thumb slips, swiping to the next photo: a selfie of her and a handsome young man with brown curly hair and a rakish smirk. Must be her boyfriend, Caleb thinks. But when Jester catches sight of the picture, her face falls very briefly before she smiles brightly at Caleb again. “Anyway, thank you for the help!” she says, getting up, and slings her bag back over her shoulder. “See you next class!” And she departs in a swirl of skirts, leaving Caleb feeling like he looked directly into the sun and his eyes are still dancing with little afterimages.

\--

Jester has a very cunning plan written out in her notebook, and it goes like this:

  1. Be super super cute
  2. Go to Professor Widogast’s office hours every week
  3. Get him to fall in love with me
  4. SUPER ROMANTIC KISS UNDER THE STARLIGHT

She’s left some blank space after that, not because she doesn’t know what to do next, but because there’s a lot of possibilities. And if one (or several of those possibilities) leave her waking up in the middle of the night with her heart racing and dampness between her legs, well, that’s not something she’s writing in a journal that Beau could find.

She’s also embellished the plan with lots of doodles of her and Professor Widogast, including portraits of him she’s done during class instead of taking notes. There’s one Jester really likes, sketched out during a break while Professor Widogast checked one of his books for something. His hair falls in soft waves in his face, she captured the angle of his hooked nose perfectly, and an endearing little frown pinches together his eyebrows.

And if Jester misses out on information in physics class because she was drawing instead, well, that’s all the more reason to come back for additional help.

“So I don’t understand,” she says, back in Professor Widogast’s office, as crisp February light filters in through his windows. “How do you _make_ a vacuum, and how did the scientists figure that out for the first time?”

Professor Widogast launches into an explanation which Jester only half pays attention, instead watching the shapes his fingers articulate in the air, the light glimmering in his crystal eyes and picking out auburn highlights in his hair. Chin propped on her hand, Jester presents her best listening face and wonders idly about the texture of his lips and –

“Miss Lavorre,” says Professor Widogast, and Jester jumps to attention. “Are you listening to me?”

“Oh yes,” she says, smiling at him. “One hundred percent.”

Professor Widogast raises a skeptical eyebrow.

“I was!” insists Jester. “There is the air pump, and, um –”

For a minute she’s worried he might be angry, but then Professor Widogast laughs, a small warm sound. “I understand it is not a topic for everyone,” he says, flipping a pen through his fingers. “What is your major?”

“Art,” says Jester demurely. “You should see my paintings sometime, they’re pretty good…”

A smile pulls up the corner of his mouth. “Maybe,” he says. “What do you like to paint?”

Jester is about to answer when sudden insecurity sticks the words in her throat. She loves her own work, but last semester a professor described her paintings as “childish and unbearably whimsical,” and she’s sure Professor Widogast expects even more refined art. “Oh… nothing much,” she sighs. “Just portraits and little animals and things…”

A little frown pulls Professor Widogast’s eyebrows together, and he cocks his head. “You sound shy about your own work,” he says. “I had not figured you as someone who was shy about – well, anything, ever.”

Jester can’t help laughing a little. “I don’t think other people in my classes take me very seriously. Since I’m not doing, you know, really serious pictures or crazy abstract art with squares everywhere,” and she uses her hands to illustrate. “You know. _Real_ art.”

“Real – there is no such – who is telling you that your paintings aren’t real art?” demands Professor Widogast, leaning forward against the desk. One freckled hand splays out on the desk emphatically, his nails neat and trimmed but his knuckles slightly rough. “That is not something they should be saying.”

He’s _defending_ Jester, and sunshine warms her chest and spreads up her neck and blooms a smile across her face. “Do you think so?” 

“_Yes._” Professor Widogast runs a hand over his stubbled jaw. “There should not be limits on art.”

Jester leaves campus that day so happy and buoyant she feels like she could float into the sky. That euphoria quickly fades, however, when she gets back to her apartment building and a young woman she doesn’t recognize is standing outside with a notebook and recorder in her hand, who approaches with purpose as soon as she sees Jester. “Miss Lavorre –”

“I’m sorry, I can’t answer any questions,” says Jester sunnily, striding past her. Mom taught her always be nice to reporters, even if you don’t want to talk to them.

“I’m doing an investigative piece on the recent death of University of Richmond student Mollymauk Tealeaf and I was wondering if you had anything to say –”

“No comment, thank you.” Brushing past the reporter, Jester unlocks the front door of the building and goes in, shutting the door behind her before the reporter can follow. All good feelings dissolved, Jester stomps up the stairs. The apartment is chilly, heat turned off since she left in the morning, and empty of Beau.

Groaning, Jester throws herself face down onto her bed, and tries not to think of anything at all.


	3. Chapter 3

The first sign that Caleb’s in trouble is when he starts looking forward to Mondays and Wednesdays.

He lies to himself at first, saying that he enjoys the productivity of a new work week, or that he enjoys the company of others after spending a weekend with only his cat. But in his heart, he knows those are fibs.

And then the Monday happens where Jester doesn’t come in for extra help, and it feels a little bit like a gray cloud coming over the sun, and Caleb has to admit it to himself. He likes her.

He _likes_ her, he likes her bright smile and bubbling laugh and the energy she always carries with her. And when he realizes this, sitting in his car in a university parking lot, he groans and drops his forehead to the steering wheel, fake leather pressing into his skin.

“You cannot,” he mutters to himself. “You absolutely cannot, it will be the end of your job here.”

It’s okay to have positive feelings about a student, the small voice in his head says. It is natural that you will get along well with some of your students. There is nothing inappropriate about a mutual friendship.

He keeps running this through his head over the next day, until he almost believes it. And then that Wednesdsay rolls around, and Jester shows up at his office wearing bubblegum pink pants that hug the swell of her hips and a soft white sweater that droops across her collarbone, baring one smooth shoulder, and his breath catches the way it did when he heard Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 for the first time, and that lie falls to pieces too.

“Hi!” says Jester brightly, dropping into the chair in front of his desk. “Sorry I wasn’t here Monday, my friend Beau sprained her ankle during track practice and I had to take her to urgent care, and then she was really cranky afterwards so I took her out for ice cream, and then –”

“Ah,” says Caleb, cutting her off, and she frowns, hurt. Ignoring the stab of guilt in his sternum, Caleb continues as reserved and professionally as possible, “What did you have a question about today?”

“Oh, nothing important really,” sighs Jester, wilting. “Just about Boyle’s law, but it’s not a big deal...”

Caleb elaborates on it, restricting himself to only the dry facts. Maybe he overdoes being detached, because Jester becomes less and less animated, and after only a couple questions rather than her usual barrage, she leaves. It’s for the best, Caleb tells himself, walking back to his car later. The distance is a good thing.

But it still aches under his collarbone like a day-old bruise.

\--

“He was probably just having a bad day,” suggests Beau. “It didn’t have anything to do with you.”

Wrinkling her nose, Jester taps it thoughtfully with the end of her pencil. “Maybe,” she says, dubious; it seems pretty obvious, though, that if Professor Widogast was acting tense and cold in front of her, that it’s _because _of her. “But he probably has bad days all the time and he’s never been like that with me before.”

It’s still too cold out to sit outside, so Beau and Jester have holed up at a corner table in the library, Beau’s crutches propped against the table and her economics textbooks and notes spread over nearly the entire work surface. Jester has her sketchbook open in front of her, ostensibly to do concepts for her next piece, but she hasn’t drawn anything yet. The library itself is one of the oldest buildings on campus, and a beautiful piece of colonial brick architecture with interior decoration inserted straight from the eighties, beige geometric patterned carpet, fluorescent ceiling lights, laminate wood desks and all. Jester hates it.

“Have you considered,” says Beau slowly, keeping her voice down, “that he thinks you guys are getting closer than is appropriate for a student and teacher and he’s trying to pull things back?”

This deserves more consideration, and Jester sketches out aimless circles, turning Beau’s words over in her mind. “I guess...”

Frowning, Beau leans forward, her elbows sliding against the papers and notebooks, and says, “Jester, you do know that it is kind of inappropriate for you to get with him, right? Like, not that I think that means you _shouldn’t_. Just that like, you know.” Beau grimaces, gesturing vaguely. “The kind of thing that gets people up in front of Ethics committees, maybe they lose their job...”

Oh. Jester’s stomach drops, cold prickles running up her arms. “But that’s only if someone _knows,_” she whispers. “So if we’re just really good at keeping it a secret –”

“Well, maybe he doesn’t want to take that risk.” Beau shrugs.

Tears stinging her eyes, Jester leans back in her chair, her hands falling in her lap. “They can’t fire him, he’s not doing anything wrong, we’re both adults –” He’s too nice to be fired and he’s a really good professor who listens patiently even when Jester asks him really stupid questions and she’s pretty sure he only lives alone at home with his cat and doesn’t have _any_ friends outside of work and if he got fired he would just be alone all the time and that would be so sad –

“Listen, I’m just saying,” mutters Beau, looking back at her papers. “Professor dating a student, usually kind of sketchy, colleges don’t like that sort of thing.” Frowning, she scratches something out in her notes. “Also they’d probably expel you or something.”

“They can’t, then they would never get the donation from my mom,” says Jester indignantly.

“Wow, okay.” Eyebrows raised sky-high, Beau goes back to her notetaking.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Tapping her pencil on her sketchbook, Jester watches Beau study with rising irritation. “You’re just jealous,” she says.

Beau snorts and rolls her eyes. “Uh-huh, yeah.”

Jester waits for a moment more, but Beau shows no sign of wanting to talk more. With a huff, Jester stuffs her sketchbook and pencils in her bag and leaves. As she goes, Beau does not look up, only muttering, “See you.”

Later on, Jester finds Fjord in the science building, sitting on a bench outside of one of the classrooms as he simultaneously works on his laptop and tears into a large sub sandwich. “Can I ask you a question?” says Jester with no preamble, plopping down on the bench next to him.

Mouth full, Fjord looks slightly alarmed, but he nods. Swallowing massively, he says, “Yeah, sure, what’s up?”

“So, you know how I’m trying to get my physics professor to sleep with me –”

Fjord sputters, turning red under his tan. “No, I did not know –”

“– and _Beau_ said that it might be a problem, like it could get him _fired_ if people found out, so maybe that’s why he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore –”

“Hang on, hang on, back up –”

“– and I was wondering what you thought about it and if I should keep trying to be friends with him, or, you know, not do that anymore, and what _you_ would do, and also get your advice because I think Beau’s kind of mad at me right now,” she finishes in a rush.

After floundering for a couple moments, Fjord seizes on, “Why is Beau mad at you?” His dark eyebrows contract with concern.

“Because I said I won’t get expelled because then the university would never get the money my mom promised them.” Jester slumps back against the wall, swinging her feet under the bench.

Fjord blows out a heavy breath, cheeks puffing out. “Well, yeah – you can’t just say things like that, you know.”

“I know,” sighs Jester. “And I know she doesn’t get along with her family either, I just...” She trails off, leaning her head back.

“Can I ask something?”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you, er, trying to sleep with your professor?” Fjord takes another bite of his sandwich, still faintly flushed. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I mean, okay, I don’t have to _sleep_ with him if he doesn’t want to,” says Jester. “I just really like him a lot and like talking with him and if we can’t be friends anymore because he thinks it’s inappropriate I’ll be really sad,” she finishes in a small voice.

She looks up to see Fjord watching her with sympathy in his amber-brown eyes. “What would you do, if it were you?” she asks, nudging her knee against his.

“Me? Oh…” Fjord asks the ceiling. “I’d probably wait until the semester’s over and I’m graduated, then the whole professor-student thing wouldn’t me an issue.”

“Yes, but then I’ll be back in LA and I won’t be able to _see _him,” wails Jester softly.

Paper crinkles as Fjord contemplates his half-eaten sandwich. “I don’t know if I can tell you what you want to hear,” he says, quiet and serious.

“It’s okay.” Jester realizes in her heart who she should have gone to for advice all along, and she smiles up at Fjord reassuringly. “Thanks for listening.”

She races home as soon as she can, dialing her mom as soon as she gets through the apartment door. To her delight, Mom picks up almost immediately. “Mama!” says Jester, tossing her bag onto her bed. “How long can you talk? I want to ask some advice…”

“Jester!” says Mom delightedly. “Of course I have time, tell me all about it. What is happening?”

“Okay, so…” Flopping down on the bed, Jester launches into a full explanation of her story with Professor Widogast, leaving nothing out, even briefly mentioning the sexy dreams. Mom listens attentively the entire time, with thoughtful little “hmms” and “ahs,” and after Jester ends by recapping her conversations with Beau and Fjord, she hums again, slow and contemplative. Jester can imagine the little wrinkle between her eyebrows as she thinks. “Well?” says Jester. “What do you think?”

“My darling, before you set your sights on this man, I think you should really make sure he is available,” says Mom. “Is he married?”

Jester rolls her eyes, because _obviously_ she already figured that out. “No, he doesn’t wear a ring, and he doesn’t even have any pictures of someone else on his desk. Just his cat, and I think his parents. It’s kind of an old photo.”

“Or maybe he is not attracted to women?”

“Mmm…” Wrinkling her nose, Jester considers. “No, I think he is. I just know.”

“I have to ask you this,” says Mom gently. “Do you want _him,_ or just somebody?”

The question hits Jester where she doesn’t expect it, right in the soft part of her heart. Catching her breath, she stares up at the ceiling and blinks against the prickle of tears in her eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe both.”

“And if you could only just be friends with him, and nothing more than that, would that be better or worse than never seeing him again?”

Jester takes time to visualize both options, feeling out which one hurts more. “Better,” she says quietly. “He is… I feel like there’s so much more to him, underneath. I want to know him better. And he doesn’t judge me, or make me feel like I need to be someone else.”

When Mom responds, Jester can hear the smile in her voice like the sun breaking through the clouds. “Then all the advice I have to offer you is this: follow your heart, wherever it leads. There may be pain, but at least you will stay true to yourself.”

This time the tears in her eyes are sweet, and Jester laughs, wrapping an arm around herself in a hug. “Thank you, Mama,” she says. “I love you.”

“And I love you, my little sapphire,” she says. “Please don’t hesitate to call if you need any more advice.”

\--

Jester’s face when she left Caleb’s office keeps haunting him: closed, shut down, like shades over a lantern. It pops up in his memory reel during moments when he least needs it, like when he’s laying in bed trying to sleep, or when he catches sight of her at the back of his classroom. For the best, he repeats to himself, but the mantra feels flat and hollow the more he says it. Better this small pain now than the greater pain of expulsion or scandal later, he tells himself, and this carries more weight.

But he can’t shake the mental image of her joyless expression, viscerally upsetting in a way he pretends not to understand. He ends up explaining this all one night to Frumpkin, who lies curled up on his cushion, and only twitches an ear at the sound of Caleb’s voice. “Well?” says Caleb, slouched in his chair, propping his head on one hand, book abandoned in his lap. “What do you think, Katze?”

Frumpkin’s eyes stay closed, his chin resting on his paws.

Sighing, Caleb stretches out his leg and kneads lightly at Frumpkin’s body with his sock-covered foot. “Mrrt?” says Frumpkin, raising his head.

“Then again, what do you know?” mutters Caleb, scritching along Frumpkin’s spine with his toes. There’s a hole in the gray weave of his sock, he notices with irritation. Frumpkin purrs and stretches on his side, legs sticking out straight and his back arched. “You are just a cat.”

How wonderfully uncomplicated it must be to be a cat, Caleb thinks, as Frumpkin resettles himself on the shabby ottoman and resumes his nap. No worrying about rent or tenure. No concerns about ethics. Only eat, sleep, play, sleep, and unconditional affection.

Maybe, ponders Caleb, there is a middle path. If he can stay friendly with Jester, keep her happy, and keep a tight, tight hold on his emotions. That way the only pain is his.

It seems like a dangerous tightrope to walk. Caleb sighs, staring unfocused into his lamplit apartment. For the first time in a while, the bare off-white walls of the refurbished garage strike him as bleak and depressing. And all his furniture speaks painfully of a life lived alone: a small table with only two chairs, one barely used; a single armchair and single ottoman; a bookcase crammed full, but no TV and couch; a kitchen meticulously scrubbed clean except for the one dirty plate and fork on the counter. Even with the warmth of Frumpkin curled up against his ankle, the space feels empty and echoing.

Picking up his book again, Caleb finds where he left off and tries to get back into the text, but the intricacies of WWI politics fail to capture his attention, and his mind keeps wandering to a pair of wide violet-blue eyes and a bubbling laugh…

Caleb tries fruitlessly for fifteen minutes before going to bed, frustrated, where he tosses and turns long into the night before slipping into restless dreams.

\--

During a quick stop in the dining hall to grab food for Beau so she doesn’t have to hop all the way over, Jester spots Professor Widogast sitting at a table under one of the tall arched windows, winter sunlight dusting his head and shoulders as he bends over a stack of papers, glasses perched on his nose and his shirt sleeves still carefully buttoned at the wrists despite the meal time. A crumb-spattered plate with knife and fork sits in front of the seat across from him, and a half-full cup of coffee perches at his left elbow. Jester debates going over, and then she remembers her mom’s advice, and she squares her shoulders and walks up to him. “Professor?”

He blinks up at her like an owl roused from its nest, and Jester is so ridiculously charmed by this that she has to bite her lower lip to hide a smile. “Good afternoon, Jester,” he says. “What can I do for you?”

“Can I sit?” she says, and before Professor Widogast says either yes or no she pulls out the chair opposite him and sits down, her elbows propped on the table in front of her. “What are you working on?”

“Oh, just some papers I’m grading…” he says, pulling the papers together into a pile as Jester leans over to try and peek at what the writing says. “For one of my other classes –”

“Are you mad at me?” asks Jester.

Professor Widogast’s bemused frown deepens, and he sets the essays aside. “Why – why would I be mad at you…?”

Jester had planned to be all confident and powerful like she imagines Mom would be if she ever finally confronted Dad, but now she finds herself knotting her fingers together in between her knees. “Well, the last time I came in for help, you were just so – I don’t know, you felt really cold and distant, and it’s not like how you normally are with me, and –”

“Jester, Jester, stop.” Taking off his glasses, Professor Widogast sighs, rubbing at his face. He looks almost pained. “That was – that was nothing to do with you. I was just preoccupied.”

Maybe Beau was right after all. “Really?”

He smiles at her, gentle and tired. “Really.”

Jester beams, incandescent with relief. “Professor Widogast –”

“Please.” A quiet relieved laugh escapes his mouth, and his shoulders relax like he’s letting a burden fall from them. “Call me Caleb.”

_Caleb,_ says Jester in her head, and it sounds so nice and familiar there. She says his name again out loud, curling her lips around the syllables like a kiss. His auburn hair gently tousled, his hands laced in front of him, Caleb gazes at Jester with a slow hunger dawning in his eyes that makes her shiver, deep in her gut. “Caleb,” Jester says again softly, to watch his lips part and his fingers twitch –

“Excuse me,” says a shrill female voice, and Jester jumps, the dining hall flooding back in around her. A short, stout woman with heavy eyebrows and dark braids, a plate of food in her hand, stands behind Jester. “That’s my seat.”

“Oh,” squeaks Jester, scrambling to get up. Caleb winces wryly, one hand toying with his glasses. “Sorry.”

“Jester, this is Ms. Brave, she’s my TA for some of the upper-level courses,” says Caleb. “Nott, this is Jester, she’s a student in my intro class.”

Jester smiles her best charming smile at Ms. Brave, who sizes Jester up appraisingly. “Okay, well, I’ll see you later!” she chirps at Caleb. “Have a nice day!” Hitching her bag over her shoulder, she hums to herself as she peruses the lunch offerings, eventually deciding on two veggie wraps and a protein shake (chocolate, the only acceptable flavor) for Beau, and a to-go pack of sushi and a blueberry muffin for herself. Unwrapping the muffin, she steps out into the cold crisp air of midday, snow dusted like beauty powder across the stone flags of the courtyard, and takes a bite, savoring the buttery sweetness of the muffin, the crystalline sugar crust on top, and the tart pop of a blueberry. “Thank you, Mama,” she murmurs happily. “You were right.”

\--

“Who was _that_?” says Nott, reclaiming her seat opposite Caleb, with an ominously meaningful look.

“I told you, she is a student, she needed help with an assignment and stopped by to ask a question.” It’s not completely a lie, Caleb reminds himself.

Nott still eyes him suspiciously as she takes a bite of her roast beef sandwich. “Student from which class?” she says around a mouthful of food, a trickle of tomato juice running down her chin.

Normally, Nott’s insatiable inquisitiveness is what makes her Caleb’s favorite TA, but he could do without it at the moment. “110,” he says stiffly.

“Ah,” Nott says sagely. She takes another bite, stretching her mouth for maximum sandwich intake. “Tryan tah flar wif oo foh a hiah grad?”

Caleb frowns at her, cocking his head. “What?”

Swallowing massively, Nott says, “Trying to flirt with you for a higher grade? I saw that coquettish look, I know what _that’s_ about,” she says sagely.

Cold prickles of alarm dance over Caleb’s skin. “I believe you are mistaken.”

“I don’t think I am.” Nott shrugs. “You never know, with some of the girls these days –”

“Let’s get back to these essays,” says Caleb, cutting her off. “I was hoping we could get them done before my next class.”

Nott squints at him. “Are you...”

“Essays, _please_.” He brandishes the stack of paper at her.

To his relief, Nott acquiesces, taking an essay off the top of the stack and starting to read through it. Caleb tries to do the same, but it’s difficult to focus, not helped by the occasional curious glances Nott keeps throwing him. He hadn’t meant to tell Jester that, to call him by his first name. He had just hated the wall in between them, and then before he could think better of it the words were out of his mouth.

A very small, honest part of himself, deep down, doesn’t regret it at all.


	4. Chapter 4

“Hey,” says Beau from her perch on the kitchen counter, when Jester comes out of her bedroom. “Morning.”

“Morning,” yawns Jester. The smell of coffee fills the air, and she rummages through the drying rack for a clean mug. Pouring herself coffee, she adds cream and sugar until it’s drinkable and sighs, taking a sip. Another Monday, another week of classes, and she contemplates her schedule with mild enthusiasm. Art will be fun, she’s excited about the piece she’s currently working on. And she’ll talk to Caleb later today...

Beau is watching her very intently. “What?” says Jester.

“Nothing.” Injured leg dangling and the other tucked underneath her, Beau goes back to her phone, thumbs tapping rapidly on the screen.

Jester doesn’t believe her for a second. “_What?_”

Sighing, Beau reaches for her travel mug and takes a long, slow drink of coffee, stalling. A slow, cold knot forms in Jester’s stomach, despite the warmth of her coffee. Beau wouldn’t act like this unless it was bad. “Have you seen the article?” says Beau.

Jester’s stomach sinks even further. “What article?”

“You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to,” warns Beau, holding her phone over to Jester. “It’s about Molly.”

_The reporter the other week,_ thinks Jester, staring at the phone. The article on Beau’s phone is titled “Glitter, Gangs, and Grants: What the Death of Mollymauk Tealeaf Reveals About the Lives of University of Richmond’s Elites.” The header image is a stylized depiction of an arm flung across the ground, the person’s body mostly cropped out of frame, and a large red pool of blood underneath them. Jester feels sick. “What does it say?” she asks.

Beau takes the phone back and sighs heavily, scrolling through the article. “Late last year – tragic incident – blah blah blah,” she says, voice heavy and flat. “Lot of talking about the average income of a Richmond student. Talking about party culture, exclusive clubs, drug use... It mentions you.” Taking a deep breath, Beau reads out, “‘University student Jester Lavorre, daughter of Hollywood star Marion Lavorre and close friend of Tealeaf, declined to comment. But according to eyewitnesses, she was present at Tealeaf’s death, along with fellow friend and heiress to the Lionett vineyard fortune, Beauregard Lionett.’” Beau’s lip curls. “Well, they got one thing wrong, at least.” 

Jester takes another sip of her coffee, although she can no longer taste it, tears slowly rising in her eyes. “Why can’t they leave him alone?” she says, in a small voice.

“Because they’re a bunch of fuckin’ vultures, that’s why,” says Beau. After a moment, her shoulders droop and she adds, “Well, okay, honestly, it’s a pretty decent exposé. But still.”

“I don’t care how decent it is!” bursts out Jester. “It hasn’t even been two months, why can’t they –” She cuts herself short, hands clenched around the mug, and her lower lip trembling.

Putting an arm around Jester, Beau pulls her against her side. Jester leans into Beau, her head nesting on Beau’s shoulder, and sighs shakily. Beau’s expression is grim, but her thumb rubs gently over Beau’s arm. “Well,” sighs Jester at last, pulling away, “I guess I should go.” Molly wouldn’t want her to be sad, Molly would want her to tackle today with a vengeance. She squares her shoulders determinedly.

“Yeah.” With a groan, Beau hops one-legged off the counter, reaching for her crutches. “Me too.”

When they get to campus, Fjord is waiting for them in the parking lot, bouncing on his heels to keep warm, a worried frown creasing his face. “Hey,” he says, as Jester and Beau walk up. “Did you see –”

“The article?” deadpans Beau. “Yeah.”

Fjord blows out a heavy breath as a frosty cloud in the morning air. “Yeah.”

He looks stressed and Beau looks stressed and Jester can’t stand it so she plasters a smile on her face and tosses her hair carelessly and says, “Guys, who cares, it’s just some stupid reporter being _stupid_, we can’t let her bother us –”

But both Fjord and Beau look down at her strangely, like she’s a child interrupting two adults in their conversation. “Jester, your name’s in the article, it could be bad for you,” says Beau slowly.

“People have been writing nasty things about my mom _all the time_, and she’s _fine_.” Jester doesn’t mention how Mom never leaves the house anymore, not even for filming. “This isn’t a big deal.”

Beau still looks skeptical, but Fjord sighs, hands shoved in the pockets of his heavy wool coat. “That’s true,” he says. “You sure you’re okay, though?”

If she says no, Fjord will drop everything to try and comfort her, and Beau will fret even if she tries to make it look like doesn’t care, and then Jester will feel extra bad because they’re feeling bad for her, and then – “I’m fine,” she says softly, smiling up at Fjord. “Promise.”

\--

From the moment Jester entered the classroom, quiet and sad-looking, Caleb guessed she was not having a good morning. Which makes him even more reluctant to return the class’s tests, though he takes care not to show that on his face. “Here are your Chapter One tests, graded,” he says, placing the file folder box on the table. “They are alphabetized by last name, please come up and take yours.”

The students file up with mild interest, crowding around the box to paw through the papers and find their name. Standing back, Caleb watches Jester as she comes up and pulls out her test, immediately unfolding it to see the grade inked in red on the front. Her face crumples like she’s going to cry, and Caleb’s heart sinks.

He can’t acknowledge it in class, not directly at least, though she’s hardly the only disappointed student. He offers a few reassuring sentences (“there’s always a learning curve at the beginning, one test score doesn’t determine your whole grade, use this as motivation for the next chapters”) and launches into his lecture, keeping half an eye on Jester. At first she seems determined to pay attention, but gradually frustration overtakes her face, until she’s not watching Caleb at all but drawing in her notebook instead. Oh well, sighs Caleb to himself. At least she’ll be in for office hours and he can help her then.

But when Jester does come in, she looks glummer than ever. “So,” sighs Caleb, seeing no point in beating about the bush. “I know you are disappointed about your test.”

Miserable, Jester folds her arms on Caleb’s desk and props her chin on them. He aches to put a hand on her shoulder, to offer some kind of comfort, but keeps his hands rigidly in his lap instead. “I thought I was doing so well,” she mumbles. “I really did.”

“Well, if you still have your test with you, we can go over it and see what went wrong –”

“Why?” demands Jester, sitting up straight. “What’s the point?”

This feels like a dangerous question, and Caleb answers carefully, “If we can see what went wrong this time, then maybe you can work on it for the future –”

“It doesn’t _matter_, because I’m _stupid_ and won’t get it,” bursts out Jester, tears glimmering in her eyes. “It’s only going to get harder from here –”

“You’re not stupid –”

“I _am!_” Jester sniffles and wipes her nose, and Caleb’s heart twinges at her distress. “This is my second time taking this class and you explained _everything_ and I still don’t get it –”

A large tear spills out from her eye and rolls down her cheek, and before Caleb can stop himself he says, “Don’t – don’t.” He stammers and recovers, “I hate to see you cry.”

Jester’s eyes flash up to Caleb’s, sharp and wet. “What?”

Backtrack, backtrack. Ears red, Caleb says, “I just mean, you are not the sort of person who should be sad.”

In an instance, her expression turns stormy, eyes flashing. “What, so I can’t have feelings?” she demands, slapping her hands on the desk and standing. “Just because I am so happy and nice, all the time, I can never be upset! Well guess what, _Caleb –_” she spits his name out like an insult “– I can be sad too!” And with that she flounces out, slamming the door behind her so hard the whole room shakes.

Stunned, Caleb sits still and blinks, trying to process what just happened and where he went wrong. Evidently, there is more going on than just a bad grade or a difficult class. Groaning, Caleb scrubs his hands over his face, wondering how to apologize to her.

There’s a knock on his door. “Come in,” sighs Caleb.

The door opens, and Essek sticks his silvery head in. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” sighs Caleb, swiveling in his chair. “It’s fine.”

\--

Jester runs out of Caleb’s office and finds the bathroom at the back of the science building that she knows no one ever goes to and shuts herself in a stall and has herself a good, long, thorough cry. She cries for Molly lying cold in the earth, and she cries for Beau whose parents don’t love her, and she cries for Fjord who doesn’t even know who his parents are, and she cries for Caleb who lives alone with only his cat, and she cries for herself a little, too.

Eventually she stops, quieting with a hiccup, feeling like a wrung-out kitchen towel. Sitting on the closed toilet lid, Jester wipes tears off her face and blows her nose with toilet paper, surprised but grateful that nobody came in during all that. “Okay,” she says to herself, getting up and walking out of the stall to the sinks. In the illumination of the bright lights encircling the mirrors, her eyes are shiny with tears, her nose and lips flushed and a little swollen. Jester sighs, wiping away smears of eyeliner and mascara from under her eyes, and sucks in a shuddering breath. “Okay, okay, okay.”

Splashing cold water on her face helps clear her mind, and taking a few more deep breaths helps too. Jester wipes her cheeks and eyes clean and fishes in her bag for mascara. She should probably apologize to Caleb, she realizes, carefully reapplying mascara to her lashes. She did kind of blow up at him.

Jester smooths her hair down carefully, curling stray locks behind her ears, and straightens the hem of her ruffled lavender blouse. Despite the redness of her eyes, the tears wash her irises gemstone blue, and the flush on both her cheeks and lips is soft and alluring. It makes the constellation of her freckles stand out, too. Considering the neckline of her blouse, Jester tugs it a little lower, baring more of her collarbone. She’s always thought she has a good neck, smooth and slender, and the sapphire pendant Mom gave her glitters softly at her throat.

Straightening her shoulders, Jester gives herself one last look in the mirror before heading back to Caleb’s office, hoping he’s still there. He is, sitting at his desk, but so is someone else – a tall, handsome black man who Jester vaguely recognizes as another professor in the department, leaning against a chair with his arms folded as he chats animatedly with Caleb about something involving “wavefunctions” and “electrons” that goes completely over Jester’s head. Caleb sees her in the doorway first and he pauses, blue eyes wide with concern. The other professor turns and looks her over, too.

“Um,” says Jester, stymied by the cool appraisal of the other professor. “Hi. I was hoping I could talk to Professor Widogast…?”

With a glance at the other professor, Caleb says, “Yes, of course, come in –”

“I’ll see you later, Caleb,” says the other professor, getting to his feet, and ooh, he’s got a cool accent. Jester mimics it in her head.

Caleb raises one hand in acknowledgement. “See you around.” When the other professor passes by Jester to leave the room, she catches a faint whiff of cologne, a silver stud shining in his earlobe. “Come in,” says Caleb, beckoning to her.

Slipping inside, Jester shuts the door behind her, and crosses over to sit in front of Caleb’s desk. “I’m sorry,” she says, “I didn’t mean to shout at you like that, I –”

“No, no, no – Jester, it’s okay,” says Caleb, leaning back in his chair and waving one hand at her. “I apologize. I did not mean to upset you.”

He looks and sounds genuinely contrite, and Jester’s heart warms. “It’s not your fault,” and she smiles at him so he knows she means it. “I was just having a _really _bad day.”

Caleb’s mouth and eyebrows twist sympathetically. “Sorry to hear that,” he says, and after a moment of hesitation, he adds, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

The question catches Jester’s breath, words she hadn’t known she needed to hear until now, and she could ask for something sensible like help on her test but instead what comes out of Jester’s mouth in almost a whisper is, “I could really use a hug.”

A faint flush creeps over Caleb’s sharp cheekbones and his tired eyes widen, his lips parted slightly. The overwhelming urge to lean over the desk and kiss him surges up in Jester. “I... I am not sure that would be appropriate,” he says hoarsely. But he can’t take his eyes off her.

She knows there’s a good reason but the rejection still stings. “Oh,” says Jester in a small voice, curling up in her seat a little. “Okay.”

Caleb frowns, chewing his lip, and stares down at his interlaced hands on the desk. His shoulders, high and tight, and the wrinkles in his brow look like he’s frustrated or deeply troubled, and Jester feels like she should leave, but the tiny voice in her head that sounds like Mom says, _Wait._ So Jester tucks her feet up under her and stays silent, trying to hold back the tears welling in her eyes. Waves of copper hair falling around his face, Caleb sighs and glances up at Jester, looking torn –

With a second sigh that’s almost a groan, Caleb drops his head into his hand and rakes his hair out of his face. “Gott hilfe mir_,_” he mutters, and gets to his feet, coming out from around the desk. “Come here.”

Jester jumps up and turns straight into his open arms and hugs Caleb, her face level with his chest, and his arms wrap around her so carefully, like he thinks she might suddenly run away. He smells like soap and old books, and a tiny bit like cinnamon, and he’s _warm_, and Jester lets out a shuddering sigh and leans into him. Caleb firms his arms around her, holding her steady, and one hand tentatively rubs over her shoulder.

Her entire world tilts and shifts, reorienting around Caleb: the press of his arms against her body, the not-quite-so-steady thumping of his heart in his chest, the sound of his breath so crisp and close in her ears, the warmth of their bodies joined at the torso and the careful space between their hips and feet. Jester can feel the lines of his ribs under her arms, count the knobs on his spine. Tilting her forehead against Caleb’s chest, Jester closes her eyes and breathes with him and she could stay here, with the golden light of a late afternoon sun drifting around them, forever.

Putting his hands on her shoulders, Caleb steps back. The break between them is a physical thing, a slim cool knife that makes Jester shiver. “Better?” asks Caleb, his gentle voice at odds with the high, patchy blush on his cheeks and the glitter in his eyes.

Moon-eyed, Jester nods. “Yes,” she says softly. “Thank you.”

Clearing his throat, Caleb backs up again. “Would you still like to look over your test?”

Oh, right, that. Jester takes a deep breath, collecting her scattered thoughts, and smiles up at Caleb. “Yes, please. I do actually want to pass your class.”

Caleb laughs quietly, the lines around his mouth and eyes creasing joyfully. “Good,” he says. “I would like you to pass, too.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit sexual content.

From across his desk, Dean Ikithon folds his hands in his lap and regards Caleb with cool gray eyes above a long, narrow nose. Framed diplomas and honors tile the dark wood wall behind him. “I assume you’ve seen the recent article?” he says.

Several potentially-relevant news articles and op-eds come to mind. “Which one?” Caleb asks.

“The one about Tealeaf’s death.”

Caleb remembers when that happened, and he remembers the various news reports, but he has the feeling Ikithon is talking about something else. “I don’t believe so.”

Leaning over the desk, Ikithon hands him some stapled-together pages, and Caleb frowns, looking them over. It’s a print-out of an article titled “Glitter, Gangs, and Grants: What the Death of Mollymauk Tealeaf Reveals About the Lives of University of Richmond’s Elites,” and the reporter paints in excruciating detail a portrait of collegiate debauchery and irresponsibility, financed by old money, with Tealeaf’s death at a theater party as the centerpiece. Jester’s name catches his eye, and stomach sinking, Caleb reads that not only was she at the party when Tealeaf died – _was killed_, he mentally corrects himself – but she was a friend of his. And this article was published the same day she was so upset after class. And further down in the article, there’s a photo of Tealeaf, and he’s the same handsome, curly-haired young man Caleb accidentally saw on Jester’s phone.

The pieces click together, and for a moment Caleb can only stare down at the printed words without reading them and ache silently on Jester’s behalf. Aware of Ikithon still watching him intently, he clears his throat and says blandly, “That is an unfortunate perspective on our university.”

He goes to hand the article back to Ikithon, but Ikithon waves it away, leaning back in his plush leather chair. “Keep it,” says Ikithon. “Yes, it is. And it’s gaining traction, too. PR is already fielding press inquiries. A statement from President Da’leth is being crafted and will go up later today on social media.”

Apprehension prickles the back of Caleb’s neck. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I assume you’ve already been made aware of the situation with Jester Lavorre and why this university is concerned she graduate without issue.”

Wariness increasing, Caleb nods.

“Unfortunately, due to this article, we can reasonably expect a certain amount of… scrutiny to be placed on our students and their behavior, particularly those referenced by the article, such as Ms. Lavorre.” Sighing, Ikithon adjusts his cuffs, his gray-white hair short and carefully combed back. “Any signs of favoritism or unfair advantage would be immediately seized on and torn apart by the media.”

Frowning, Caleb says, “So I should not try to make sure she passes the class, then?”

“Oh, no no no. Do everything you can, just don’t make it _obvious_,” says Ikithon, raising his eyebrows. “Mrs. Lavorre has promised a very generous contribution that our department could put to very good use.”

Where? Caleb wants to ask. I won’t see a penny of it. But he bites his tongue.

“You do understand what I’m saying, don’t you, Caleb?”

“You want me to make sure Jester Lavorre passes my class despite her demonstrably struggling significantly with the subject, without using any sort of special methods or extra attention that could be seen as favoritism,” says Caleb dryly.

Ikithon chuckles. “Precisely.”

The unspoken weight of Caleb’s employment hangs heavy in the air, the knowledge that if this goes wrong, he’ll take the fall winding tight around his ribs. “I’m a teacher,” says Caleb hoarsely. “Not a miracle worker.”

Mouth twisted dryly, Ikithon says, “Aren’t they supposed to be the same thing?”

He knows he has Caleb caught, Caleb can see it in the curl of his lip and the smug twinkle in his eye, and Caleb carefully keeps his expression as blank as possible. “I have a class starting in ten minutes. Is there anything else you wanted to speak with me about?” He only barely refrains from adding a snide “sir” at the end.

Ikithon looks like he knows what Caleb was about to say anyway. “No, no. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

“You too,” says Caleb, and leaves.

Ikithon’s office is practically the opposite side of campus from the science building, and both frustration and time fuel Caleb as he speedwalks through the colonial brick buildings along broad paved paths, under gray-brown trees still bare-branched under the crystal-blue sky. Despite the chill of late February, Caleb rapidly works up a sweat, walking faster as if he can get away from the shadow of Ikithon looming over him. It’s just not fast enough.

Arriving at the classroom at the same time as his students, Caleb mutters “Excuse me,” and pushes past them to get to the front of the class. Without the cool of outside air his coat and scarf feel intolerably hot and constricting, and Caleb strips them off irritably, a lock of sweaty hair falling in his face. Damn Ikithon, he thinks, tugging the knot of his tie away from his throat. Damn him and his mind games and his smug sense of superiority –

Caleb yanks his tie off, whipping it out of his shirt collar, and as he does so he catches the eye of Jester in her usual seat at the middle and front of the room. Her cheeks are pink, her lips parted, and her wide eyes fixed on him in a way that makes his stomach curl pleasantly. When she meets Caleb’s gaze, she flushes deeper and hides half her face behind her notebook, glancing up at him coyly.

You can’t, thinks Caleb, tearing away from her to pull his computer out of his bag. Especially after the meeting you just had. You absolutely cannot.

He tries not to look at Jester for the rest of class, but it’s difficult, and he ends the lesson frustrated in an entirely different way than when it began.

\--

University of Richmond is dark at night, most of the buildings closed and empty, wrought iron lamps above the walkways cutting ribbons of yellow-white light through the campus. But there’s one light that’s on: Caleb’s office, an amber glow in the second-story window visible through the cracks of blinds to Jester on the sidewalk below.

Staring up at his window, she folds her coat closer around herself, a little excited tremor in her stomach. There’s no middle ground, either she goes for it or she doesn’t. And Jester _wants_, she’s wanted since Caleb stormed into class this morning and dragged his tie off to bare the sweaty flush on his throat, his blue eyes alight with a wild fire, and his hair beguilingly disheveled. So really, there’s only ever been one option.

Taking a deep breath, Jester enters the science building.

The carpeted halls are dark, lit only by the emergency exit signs and light from streetlamps filtering through the windows, all the staff gone home for the day. Jester climbs the stairs up to the second floor, pacing slowly down the hall until she gets to Caleb’s office. His door is ajar, a wedge of lemon-yellow light spilling into the hallway. After taking a moment to adjust her clothes (unbuttoning her tight white blouse one button lower, carefully tweaking the pleats of her plaid skirt, pulling her socks higher up her calves), and smoothing out her hair, Jester knocks lightly on his door. “Caleb?”

She pushes the door wider to enter and see Caleb at his desk, surrounded by multiple open books and with a startled expression under his glasses. “Jester? What are you doing here this late?”

“I was on campus late, and I saw your light was on…” Jester shuts the door behind her, quietly locking it, and crosses the room, one foot in front of the other, leaning extra weight from hip to hip.

Caleb frowns and cocks his head, not getting it yet. “Yes, I was working late –”

Circling around the desk, Jester leans over, takes Caleb’s glasses off, and kisses him.

His lips are warm under hers and slightly rough, his surprised gasp whispering over her mouth. Making a small sound in the back of his throat, Caleb twitches, like he wants to pull away but can’t quite. “Ah,” he murmurs. “We shouldn’t –” But his fingers close around Jester’s arm, soft as worn leather and inevitable as fate.

Emboldened, she kisses him again, setting his glasses down carefully on the desk and leaning in further, bracing herself with that hand. Caleb groans quietly, still not managing to pull away, his lips moving with hers. “Jester…”

Jester draws back just enough to look him in the eye as innocently as possible. “Yes?”

Closing his eyes, pained, Caleb tips his forehead against hers. “We can’t…”

“Why not?” Jester slides her hand up his arm lingeringly, fingers whispering over the weave of his cotton shirt, her heart pounding like she’s running a marathon. His hand still on Jester’s arm, Caleb sighs, his thumb slowly rubbing over the tender skin of her inner wrist. “Why shouldn’t we?”

“Because…” His stubble scratches over her skin as Caleb presses his face to the side of hers, dragging down to her neck, and he inhales deeply and shudders. Jester waits for him to finish his sentence, but the only sounds he makes are his heavy breathing and a thick swallow.

Swinging a leg over, Jester sits on his lap, her thighs pressing against his. Caleb’s hands land on her hips, her waist, her ribs, his face centimeters from hers now. “This is a bad idea...” he mutters, the air vibrating between his lips and Jester’s, and she catches her breath, arms circling around Caleb’s neck. “We should not be doing this... ah –” and he groans and seizes her face in his hands and pulls her in for a furious kiss.

Sparks burst over Jester’s skin and she kisses him back, his lips warm, his hands warm, everything warm, and she arches her back and parts her lips and Caleb’s fingers tangling in her hair is everything she’s ever wanted. She angles her hips, rolling into his, and the distinct hardness between his legs sends a nervous thrill up her spine. Each kiss burns mellow on her lips, their shared gasps heavy between them, and when Jester curls a hand around Caleb’s throat his pulse pounds against her palm. Angling her head, she presses a kiss to the pink-and-white skin of his neck, watches the blood rush in to fill the imprint of her lips, and tugs aside his shirt collar to kiss his neck again. Caleb hisses in a breath as her lips touch his hot skin, his head lolling back against his chair, one hand at the back of her neck and the other dragging down her spine, leaving embers in its wake.

Unbuttoning the top button of his shirt, Jester pulls the white fabric aside so she can kiss at the hard point of his collarbone. Opens another button, kisses lower in the sparse red hairs on his chest, Caleb sinking his fingers back in her hair as he drops his head to hers and exhales sharply. Emboldened, Jester opens his shirt all the way, caressing slowly over his flat chest and the lean lines of his stomach. But when she reaches up to move his shirt off his shoulders, Caleb takes her wrist again, gentle but firm. “No,” he says quietly, serious, and this time Jester knows he means it.

“All right,” she whispers, and kisses him again, slow and sweet as honey.

This time his hands roam over her neck, little static shocks under her skin where his fingers touch, and gently widen the collar of her blouse. “You are _very_ pretty,” he says huskily, and kisses her exposed throat.

Jester gasps as sharp heat floods through her, and she clutches at his shoulders and kisses clumsily at Caleb’s ear and neck as he drags his lips down her throat, the light touch of his tongue making her shiver. His hand skims down to cup her breast, squeezing lightly, and Jester _whines,_ burying her face in his neck. 

Caleb’s pleased little chuckle reverberates in her ear, making everything inside her draw dark and tight. He squeezes again, palming gently as one thumb slips in between her buttons to brush at her skin, and Jester shudders and clings tighter to him, hips rocking of their own accord. “Oh,” sighs Caleb, slowly unbuttoning her blouse, “we should _really_ not be doing this…”

Jester doesn’t care.

He opens her shirt, exposing the lavender lingerie Jester carefully picked out a few hours ago, and pushes it down and off her shoulders. Jester shivers slightly, aware of the weight of his gaze on her bare skin, the air cool on her back. His one arm looped securely around her waist, with his other hand Caleb traces two fingers along the lacy edge of her bra cup, just brushing sensitive skin. He reaches the clasp in the front and lingers, Jester’s breath catching in anticipation, before instead sliding his fingers up under the mesh and lace to run along the lower curve of her breast. Shuddering, Jester bites her lip, each touch of his magnified ten times, a hundred times. Constrained by the fabric, Caleb strokes her breast once, twice, and then withdraws his hand to splay it flat and warm over her stomach. Jester brushes a strand of copper hair behind his ear, caresses over his sharp cheekbone and narrow jaw, and Caleb looks up at her with a deep hunger that makes her insides clench pleasantly in anticipation. She only has a second to appreciate it though before he lunges forward again, kissing her, tongue slipping against her lips, and then –

“On the desk,” mutters Caleb into her mouth, hands sliding down to grab her bottom, and Jester wraps both arms and legs around him so he can lift her the half-foot up and over and set her down, paper crinkling underneath her.

In between kisses, Jester manages, “But – your papers –”

Caleb grunts, dismissive, and kisses her again, his bare torso pressed flush against hers, one hand yanking her hips closer against his and his growing bulge, the other sliding up her ribcage to clasp her other breast, long fingers massaging, rubbing over the hardening bump of her nipple under the delicate fabric. Overwhelmed, Jester closes her eyes, kissing him like each kiss cracks away another little piece of her porcelain exterior.

Sliding his hand down the valley between her breasts, Caleb flicks the clasp on her bra open. Breath trembling, her legs hiked up around his hips, Jester braces herself on one hand and holds onto Caleb with the other as he slowly takes her bra off like drawing back curtains, exposing her creamy breasts and the flushed pink of her nipples to the open air. Jester is suddenly vividly aware of their surroundings, of the safe little lamp-lit box of Caleb’s office and the dark uncertainty of the world all around them, kept at bay by only a single locked door and blinds over the windows.

With both hands, Caleb squeezes her breasts, pressing them up and together, lightly twisting at each nipple, the push-pull reaching deep into Jester to her wanting core, spinning desire tighter and tighter in her until she can’t breath. She watches his fingers sinking into her flesh, fascinated, both so unfamiliar and vividly intimate, and then his copper head bows, lips and stubble brushing over her skin as Caleb kisses down her chest and over the curve of each breast. His mouth fastens over one nipple, tongue flicking over her, and Jester squeals faintly. When he sucks at her, Jester gasps again and drags her fingers through Caleb’s hair, somehow both full to the brim and deeply, deeply hungry, Caleb at her mercy and she at his. “Caleb,” she whispers, not knowing what she wants other than to hear his name in her voice.

Surfacing, he kisses back up along her neck, making her shiver. “Hm?”

Jester doesn’t have words, so she kisses him, his skin hot to touch, his weight bearing into her, her whole body singing with desire. Caleb’s hand slides up her thigh, pushing her skirt up, until he reaches the fragile lace along her hip. “Lie down,” he murmurs, and tweaks gently at her matching panties.

For a second, nerves flutter in Jester’s stomach as she teeters on a threshold she only ever toed the edge of before. “What are you going to do?”

Caleb’s eyes are round, and blue, and warm, the same eyes she’s smiled into every week. “With your permission,” he says, and the formality of those words in his rough-edged voice makes Jester’s stomach flutter again, this time with want, “I would like to eat you out.”

Delighted tremors spill over Jester, her stomach clenching. “Okay,” she says, lips curling in a smile, and kisses Caleb, his mouth so hot and wet against hers, his tongue insistent, what must it be like when he kisses down there –

Caleb eases her back until she lies over his desk, her hips lined up against the near edge and her hair spilling over the other, his hand dragging over her breast, and Jester sucks in a sharp breath and arches up into his touch. Folding her skirt up over her belly, Caleb slides his hands along Jester’s inner thighs, her stomach jumping as he approaches her groin, pressing along the sensitive skin and tendons in the innermost crease of her legs. His eyes fastened intently on hers, Caleb hooks his fingers in the waistband of her panties and slowly, inexorably, draws them down.

Unable to take her eyes off him, Jester shivers, pointing her toes as Caleb pops her shoes off and slips her panties free of one leg and then the other. Kneeling, Caleb hooks her legs over his shoulders, and then his mouth is on her and Jester throws her head back, a high whine in her throat. It’s like nothing she’s ever felt before, the steady pressure of his tongue on her clit, the trace of his fingers along her labia, sliding _in, _the slick heat of his mouth and her own wetness mingling, and Jester grabs at the desk to steady herself and curls her toes on his shoulders and gasps and cries until _surely_, surely someone can hear them, someone will open the door and come in and see her draped unclothed and exposed over Caleb’s desk with his head between her legs –

Orgasm rushes over Jester in shimmering waves, her core tightening and loosening and tightening again, unbearably sweet, hot trickles between her legs as she keens and arcs her back. For a moment, all she can do is try to catch her breath, her body turned to jelly. Without her own panting cries, the office is suddenly very quiet.

Pressing a kiss to the inside of her thigh, Caleb rises, leaning over to kiss her on the lips. Jester can taste herself on him, sharp and musky, and she realizes sweat dampens her entire body. “That was good, _ja_?” murmurs Caleb, his hand sliding around to cup her jaw.

Eyes still closed, Jester smiles blissfully, kissing him soft and clumsy. “Yeah,” she breathes. She should return the favor, she knows, but for a few more moments she wants to enjoy this happy haze. “_So_ good.”

Caleb hums, pleased, and kisses her again. When he helps her sit up, sweat sticks a couple of loose papers to Jester’s back where her shirt rode up, and she has to awkwardly peel them off. “Oh no – your notes – Caleb, I am so sorry –”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, sitting back in his chair and reaching to pull her into his lap, but Jester has another idea. Slipping off the desk, she sinks to her knees in between his legs, running her hands up along his thighs. Caleb blushes bright red, his eyes sparking with desire, his lips slick and a little swollen. “Ah…”

“My turn,” says Jester, and before her nerves can get the better of her she unbuttons and unzips his pants.

His boxers underneath are plain, gray cotton, and she pulls them down over his hips, exposing the tangle of red curls and Caleb’s hardened cock, the tip flushed as rosy as his face and already shining with pre-come. Jester considers it for a moment, planning her angle, and then wraps a hand around his shaft as she slides her lips over the head, letting her tongue press against his heat as she wraps her mouth around him.

Caleb sucks in a sharp breath, twitching in his seat, and drags his fingers through Jester’s hair. Humming slightly, she leans her head back in his hand briefly before moving back down his cock, finding a slow, steady rhythm. She can taste the slightly bitter pre-come, and his skin radiates warmth, silky and hard to touch. With her free hand, Jester caresses up to his hip, drags her fingers over the jutting hipbone, and Caleb groans, his hand in her hair tightening.

_That’s good to know,_ Jester thinks, and caresses his hip again, still moving back and forth on his cock. Caleb’s breaths come shorter and shorter, throaty, and when she sinks in deeper than ever and tightens her hand he moans, desperate. “Oh,” he pants. “Oh – ah – _Jester –_”

His cock jumps in her hand and mouth and she pulls back just as Caleb comes, thick white liquid spurting out of his cock and onto her hand, dripping thick along her wrist. Jester strokes him through the orgasm, admiring his head tilted back so sharply, the lines of his throat, the expanse of his bare chest. Finally, Caleb sighs and relaxes back into his chair, eyes closed, the hair at his temples mahogany and his cheeks glittering with sweat. Warm pride blossoms in Jester, and she rests her chin on his knee, gazing tenderly up at Caleb. “How was that?” she asks quietly.

Caleb half-laughs, half-groans, combing through Jester’s hair. “You are going to be the death of me, Jester.”

Not sure if that’s a compliment or not, Jester frowns. Noticing, Caleb smiles down at her, the back of his knuckles brushing her cheek. “It was very good. Thank you.”

Jester allows herself a smirk of triumph, rising up on her knees, careful not to drip come on Caleb’s pants or the carpet. “I am pretty good,” she acknowledges, and leans up as best she can to kiss Caleb on the lips.

He chuckles, kissing her back, and then notices her awkward hand. “Here – ah –” and he rolls over to grab a box of tissues off his desk, handing them to her. Pulling out a handful, Jester wipes her hand off thoroughly and carefully and tosses the wadded-up tissues into his trash can, now on her feet and leaning back against his desk. Her panties are on the gray-green carpet, her bra is on his desk, and her shirt is a crumpled white pile by the wheels of his chair. For a moment, Jester feels vividly exposed again, wanting to fold her arms self-consciously over her chest, but Caleb zips his pants back up and reaches for her, pulling her back onto his lap. Contentedly, Jester curls up in his arms, resting her head on his chest. “So,” says Caleb at last, his hand skimming over her bare shoulder.

“So… what?”

“So that happened.”

“It did.” Jester looks up at him, searching his face for any regret. “Do you wish it hadn’t?”

“No! No,” and Caleb drops his head to kiss her hair. At ease again, Jester closes her eyes and nestles back into his chest. “But I… do not think we should do this again.”

He says that, but Jester puts just about as much stock in that as she does his earlier protestations. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Frowning, Caleb leans back to look at her. “Are you sure? You are not upset about that?”

Jester shrugs, not wanting to play her hand in case it spooks him off. “We’ll see.”

A dry, rueful laugh escapes Caleb’s lips. “That we will.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit sexual content.

Jester comes back to the apartment flushed with victory and oxytocin because she _did_ it, she had sex with Caleb and it was _so_ good, as good as all the romance novels she’s read, and she’s going to go to bed so happy tonight –

When she opens the apartment door, the kitchen light is on, and Beau sits at the kitchen table with a textbook open in front of her, papers scattered around her, and her fingers stretched against her temples with a dead expression on her face. “Hey,” she says, barely glancing at Jester.

“_Hiiiii._” Jester slides into the seat opposite Beau and props her chin on her hands.

Slowly, Beau raises her head, and her eyes travel over Jester’s flushed cheeks and mussed hair, and she groans and rubs her forehead. “You did it, didn’t you.”

“Yup,” says Jester, popping the _p_. “I had sex with _Caleb_.”

Beau blinks deadpan at her. “It’s Caleb now?”

“Yeah, it’s been Caleb for a _while,_ he _said _I could call him that, and besides I’m not going to call him ‘Professor Widogast’ now that we’re having _sex._” Jester rolls her eyes, reaching over and fishing a cookie out of the recently-refilled ceramic jar on the table. “_Duh._”

“So like what,” says Beau, “you guys are a thing now?”

“Weeeeellll...” Swinging her legs, Jester takes a bite of cookie. “I’m not really sure? Afterwards he was all –” she deepens her voice, doing her best attempt at a German accent “‘– I don’t think we should do this again,’ and I was like ‘Okay,’ but _really _I know that Caleb _does_ want to do this again and he just can’t admit it to himself –”

“Well, I, uh,” and Beau clears her throat. “That’s great. Good job. I’m proud of you.” A sudden curious light hits her eyes, and she asks, “That was your first time, right?”

“_No._”

Beau raises her eyebrows.

“It’s _not_,” insists Jester, which is the _truth_, unless the handjobs she traded with that beautiful raven-haired boy in the back of his car sophomore year don’t count. “It’s not!”

Despite looking back down at her notes, Beau can’t hide the amused twitching of her lips. “All right.”

Whatever, Jester feels great and even Beau can’t put a damper on that. “What are you studying?” she says through a mouthful of cookie, leaning over to peer at her book.

Brushing crumbs off the page, Beau says, “Poly sci, I got a midterm next week.”

Jester waits for Beau to add on, but she keeps staring at the page with a slightly-more-intense version of the dead look she had when Jester first walked in. “Is it boring?” says Jester. “Are you having a hard time focusing? Am I distracting?”

Slowly raising her head, Beau looks up at Jester with murder in her eyes.

Jester giggles and grabs another cookie before scampering off to her room. Even if Caleb said they should never do this again, well. Jester knows he doesn’t mean that.

She just has to help him realize it.

\--

On Wednesday morning, Caleb arrives at the classroom an extra five minutes early, giving himself time to get himself in order as the previous class packs up and files out. He plugs his laptop in and gets his presentation on the screen and his mic plugged in and then he has seven minutes and thirty-two seconds to stand behind the lectern and nominally look through his notes, but really mentally prepare himself for seeing Jester for the first time since she left his office Monday night, her shirt hastily rebuttoned, hair disheveled, cheeks flushed, and eyes bright with excitement. It’s a mental image he’s been replaying over and over during quiet moments, not letting himself dip further into his memory, but with Jester in front of him...

The first few students start to trickle in. Caleb glances up from below his brows, but none of them are Jester. Maybe she won’t come in today, he thinks, although that’s not so much a relief as it is an extension of his anxiety. Maybe she’s had regrets. Maybe she can’t be around me anymore.

That thought plagues him as the class fills up, even though he knows Jester always gets in right before class starts. Resigning himself, Caleb switches his mic on and clears his throat. “Morning, everyone,” he says, stacking his lecture notes. “Today we’re going to talk about the principles of magnetic resonance –”

The door at the back of the class opens and Jester hurries inside, wearing a deep pink dress and clutching her bookbag, a mischievous grin dancing on her lips. Caleb glances at her, lights dancing up his spine that he steadfastly ignores, and returns to his notes. “– which you will most likely know as the technology behind MRIs. This concept –”

Slipping down the side staircase, Jester wedges her way through a row of seats, students muttering and leaning forward to avoid being whacked in the head by her bag, and picks a chair a few rows back from the front, almost directly in the center.

“– is primarily a phenomenon in quantum physics, which this course does not cover –”

Sitting down, Jester fluffs her hair and pulls a notebook and pencil out of her bag, glancing up through her lashes at Caleb. The memory of her kneeling between his legs bubbles up to Caleb’s consciousness, and heat rises to his cheeks.

“– but they are still good principles to be aware of, especially if you plan to pursue more physics learning in the future.” Caleb clears his throat, determinedly not looking at Jester. “Would anyone like to summarize the assigned reading?”

Eyes fixed on Caleb, Jester slowly puts her pencil in her mouth and bites down suggestively on it, the tip of her tongue peeking from between her coral-painted lips.

Caleb’s ears go hot and he silently curses the fact that his skin shows the rush of blood to his face so easily. Determinedly not looking at Jester, Caleb instead focuses on one of the other students who raises her hand. “Yes, Miss Baker?”

“Well, it started off with what magnetic dipoles are, which are...” She continues haltingly, reading off her notes. Despite keeping his attention fixed on her, Caleb can still see Jester out of the corner of his eye. Smiling, she raises her eyebrows and rolls the pencil between her teeth, and winks at Caleb.

He realizes Baker has stopped and is waiting expectantly for him to respond. “Thank you,” says Caleb, clearing his throat hastily. “Did anyone have any questions about the reading?”

Jester’s hand shoots up. Caleb waits to see if anyone else raises their hand before turning to her with a pleasantly bland smile. “Yes?”

“Oh, I was just wondering if this chapter was going to cover anything about the principles of magnetic attraction,” she says, so innocently Caleb can picture the halo hovering above her head. “You know, about what makes two magnets _stick_ to each other...”

She tries to keep her expression virtuous, but the mischievous sparkle in her eyes and the twitching of her lips belies that. Caleb remembers her mouth on his and the same glimmer in her eyes when she blew him to completion and he is quietly and distinctly glad he stayed standing behind the lectern. “Later in this chapter, yes,” he says, keeping iron-tight control of his voice and ignoring the heat on his face in front of two hundred students. “We won’t cover that in this class, though.”

“Okay,” she says, perfectly content, and sticks her pencil back in her mouth.

How Caleb makes it through that lecture, he doesn’t know. With Jester seated front and center, he can’t avoid looking at her for the entire class, and every time he does she’s got her pencil in her mouth between her teeth, her tongue teasing along it, her lipstick smudged on the pencil shaft. Caleb focuses as hard as he can on the lecture, on how _boring _and _dry _it is, don’t think about Jester on his lap, don’t think about Jester spread out on his desk, _focus_, damn it. The minutes drag on and every so often a fresh blush hits his face, and he knows everyone can see it but all he can do is keep his voice steady and his expression calm and not acknowledge it at all. He can’t tell from anyone’s blank faces if they realize what’s happening or not. For once, he’s glad so many of them zone out minutes after he starts talking. But Jester stays razor-focused, her eyes fixed on Caleb...

With relief, Caleb reaches the end of his lecture, and if it’s a little earlier than class is supposed to end he’s not complaining. Trying not to sound rushed, he assigns homework for next week and dismisses the students, who promptly break into chatter and pack up. They don’t seem to pay him any mind, and as they filter out, Caleb allows himself a brief second to brace himself against the lectern, let out a heavy breath, and –

“Caleb?” says Jester, approaching his lectern with an angelic smile.

Heat rushes back to Caleb’s face and he glances quickly around, making sure they’re the only two in the classroom, before grabbing Jester’s arm and dragging her back behind the projection wall to the tech supply closet. Jester giggles, moving with him as he pulls them both into the closet and shuts the door. “Do you have _any _idea what you are doing to me?” he growls, pushing her up against the wall, barely any space around them.

Even in the dim light, her impish grin tells Caleb she knows _exactly_ what she’s doing. “I don’t know,” she says, swaying her hips. “Why don’t you tell –”

Caleb grabs her face in his hands and kisses her.

He knows he shouldn’t, he _knows_, but all his reasons and resolutions crumble into ash the second his lips touch hers. And Jester kisses right back up into him, standing on tiptoe so she can wrap her arms around his waist. Using the wall as leverage, Caleb pushes themselves closer together, his fingers tangling in her hair. Jester writhes sensuously up against him, her hips pressing into his, and Caleb sucks in a breath as his whole body responds with desire. He opens his mouth, letting Jester slide her tongue against his, and pushes a leg in between hers. Technically they have fifty-seven minutes until the next class starts at one, but anyone could walk in at any time, and – “Jester,” growls Caleb, mouthing along her neck, and she pants and tilts her head back. “I want you, now, here…”

Jester glances up at him and he catches the wicked light in her eyes as she grabs his crotch and squeezes. Knees nearly buckling, Caleb groans and yanks her up against him. Her teeth close on his earlobe and a bright tingle shoots down his spine, his groin tightening. Sliding his hands under her skirt, Caleb grabs Jester’s ass, kneading firm muscle, and she shivers, nails raking down his back.

The blood pounding in his veins makes it hard to think straight, and Caleb slides his thumbs along Jester’s thighs, pressing into the points of her hips and down along the soft crease of her inner thighs to the damp heat in her underwear, and Jester whines prettily and presses her face to his neck. “Caleb,” she breathes, tickling his neck, and he rubs gently at her, prompting another full-body shudder. Her one hand grips his back as the other drags down his front in the inestimably small space between them, down to unbutton his pants.

Caleb gasps as her hand slides into his boxers, her touch cool on his hard cock, and kisses at her neck. Impatient, he drags Jester’s panties down enough that he can slide his fingers over her labia, easing between the slick folds to where she’s most sensitive. When he rubs at her, Jester squeals muffled into his shoulder, her hand tightening around his cock, and the rush of blood would make Caleb moan if he didn’t swallow it down. He sets a rhythm, steady, circular motions, and Jester pants and shakes in his arms, her voice pitching higher and higher – “Shh,” hisses Caleb, and she gulps down a cry and buries her face in his neck. “We have to be quiet –”

Jester gasps high and breathless into his neck, arching against him like with an electric shock, her body trembling with orgasm. Her hand on Caleb’s cock is slick with his own precome and he ruts up into it instinctually, and Jester wraps her other arm around his waist to yank him closer. She nips at his neck, trembling, and Caleb feels like he’s about to explode, a clay pot full of hot coals, and with each stroke of her hand on him the cracks widen and widen until he bursts, holding onto the wall for support, shuddering gasps wracking him as he comes.

For a minute, neither of them move, clinging to each other sweaty and boneless. Finally Caleb groans (thirty-four minutes until the next class starts) and pulls away as best as he can in the tiny closet, uncomfortably aware of his disheveled condition. “Well,” he says, still catching his breath. “That was. Hah.”

“Tissue?” says Jester sweetly, holding a box out to him.

There must have already been some in the closet. Mutely, Caleb accepts one and wipes himself off, resigning himself to a bathroom trip to do a more thorough job. In this light, he can’t see if there are any spots of come on his clothes, which he desperately hopes there aren’t. It’s not like he thought to bring a change of pants with him to work today.

“Listen, Jester,” he says, fastening his trousers back up and crumpling the soiled tissue up into a ball to be thrown away, “we can’t – we can’t keep doing this. We can’t do this again, do you understand?”

She regards him curiously, softly, so close that he could kiss her again if he wanted. “Why not? Don’t you like this?”

“I do – I do, very much so, but that is not the point!” Caleb drags a hand through his sweaty hair, desperation tinting his voice. “If someone catches us, we could get in a lot of trouble, you could be expelled, I could lose my job –”

“They’re not going to expel me,” says Jester breezily, arms folded over her chest. “My mom promised this really big donation to the school once I graduate and they care _way_ more about that –”

Flames burst in Caleb’s chest, this time of anger: how can she be so careless, how can she dismiss so easily what plagues him daily, and he can’t even talk to his parents with no one to blame but himself (he’s going to have to tell her about that sometime, _schieße_), and worst of all she’s _right._ She’s right, and it’s not fair, and Caleb stares furiously at her while wrestling his breathing under control. “How lucky for you,” he manages at last. “Not all of us have that luxury.”

Frowning, Jester cocks her head. “Caleb, did I say something wrong – oh, _no –_”

He opens the closet door behind him, letting light flood in. “I’m sure you have places to go,” he snaps, backing out. “As do I.”

“Caleb, no – Caleb, wait, I didn’t mean it like that!” cries Jester after him as he strides over to collect his things. “Caleb!”

Ignoring her, Caleb takes the stairs up two at a time, not looking back. Just as he goes through the door, he hears Jester’s frustrated, stricken cry behind him, and then the door closes.

Later, after Caleb has washed himself more thoroughly and forced down a sandwich and had time to sit quietly in his office with a book and a fresh mug of coffee, he begins to regret his explosion of temper. Jester had seemed genuinely distressed by upsetting him; clearly she hadn’t meant any offense. And Caleb supposes it’s not her fault she was born to a life of privilege, or that he no longer has a relationship with his parents, or that the administration values dollars over integrity. His regret deepens further when his office hours come and go with no sign of Jester. He stays a full hour later than he normally would, hoping she might come by, but eventually as twilight falls and the lamps turn on, he has to admit to himself she’s not coming back.

Sighing, Caleb packs his bag up, puts on his rusty wool coat and wraps his worn scarf around his neck, and trudges through a late, slushy snowfall to his car. At least both headlights work when he turns them on.

That’s a plus.

\--

“Oh, honey,” croons Mom worriedly as Jester cries into the phone, curled up on her side on her bed. “Shh, my dear, it’s all right, it’ll be fine –”

“What if he _hates_ me now?” Jester gasps in between sobs. “What if he never ever wants to talk to me again, or even _see_ me –”

“Now, now, I don’t think that will happen,” soothes Mom. “Jester, darling. It’s all right, be still. Listen to me.”

Hiccuping, Jester quiets herself, choking down the last few sobs that claw up her throat. “Lovers have fights all the time,” Mom continues, soft and lyric like she’s telling a story. “It’s part of loving someone so much when you know them so little. What matters is not the fight, but what you do afterwards. Apologize to him, sincerely. Acknowledge you did wrong and promise to never do it again. And that is all you can do.”

“And what if – what if he’s still mad at me?” sniffles Jester.

Mom pauses delicately before answering, “That is not up to you to control, my dear. Sometimes our words have consequences beyond what we desire.”

Which means if Caleb hates her forever it’s _her fault._ Jester wants to cry again, but she holds it in, taking a deep shaky breath instead. “I should have known,” she confesses in a small voice. “Fjord told me that was a bad thing to say to people. But I just didn’t want Caleb to worry about me –”

“I know, I know,” says Mom warmly. “We all make mistakes. That is part of life.”

The sudden petty urge to ask “What mistakes have _you_ made?” rises up in Jester, but she swallows that back down too. “Okay,” she says instead. “Thank you, Mama.”

“Of course, darling. I’m putting together another care package for you too, it should be in the mail soon. I’ve got some of your favorite homemade fudge in it…”

Jester can’t help smiling at that, the pillow damp under the side of her face. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too.”

\--

The next afternoon, Caleb sits at his desk in his office with Nott while they make their way through stacks of essays submitted by his applied physics class. “No, no, no,” says Caleb, casting a critical eye over Nott’s grading. “Not like that, I should have a rubric in here somewhere –” and he starts hunting through the piles of papers on his desk.

Someone knocks on the door. “Yes?” says Caleb distantly, searching through a stack of notes on the Calabi-Yau manifold. “Come in.”

The door cracks open and Jester pops her head in, and Caleb’s heart thuds. “Hi,” she says, faltering when Nott swivels around in her seat to stare at her. “Um.”

“I don’t have office hours currently,” says Caleb hoarsely on reflex. But if Nott wasn’t here…

Jester flushes pink, and Caleb wonders if she’s thinking about their last office hours too. “I know,” she says. “I just, um, I wanted to talk to Caleb about something –”

Ignoring Nott’s significant look, Caleb gets to his feet, taking his glasses off and putting them in his pocket. “Yes, of course,” he says, circling the desk. “Nott, will you excuse me?”

“_Sure._”

He slips out into the hallway with Jester, closing the door to his office behind him. The hallway is empty, but Caleb draws Jester with him into one of the benched alcoves, bringing them a little more out of eyesight. She must have come straight from a painting class: her t-shirt and high-waisted jeans are spattered with different colors, and a smudge of blue paint adorns her nose. “Jester, I am glad you came by,” he says. “I wanted to say –”

“Caleb, I’m sorry,” says Jester earnestly. “About yesterday. I know what I said was wrong, I wasn’t trying to make you upset, I was trying to show you shouldn’t worry…”

“Oh,” says Caleb, very cleverly. “Ah.”

“And _also_,” she continues, hands interlaced nervously in front of her, “I was thinking and I shouldn’t have provoked you like that, you know, with chewing on the pencil, and I think that was…” She clears her throat, looking up anxiously at Caleb. “I think I shouldn’t have done that, and I’m sorry.”

Conflicting thoughts twine in Caleb’s brain: on instinct, he wants to comfort Jester, to tell her it’s okay, but the truth is it’s not okay, he was very much frustrated and embarrassed and doesn’t want it to happen again… but then, he _did_ enjoy the outcome. Finally, Caleb settles on a simple “Thank you. I appreciate the apology.”

A relieved smile flutters across Jester’s face, and the tension in Caleb’s gut loosens in response. “I must apologize as well,” he says. “I shouldn’t have blown up at you like that, and to be honest, I should not have dragged you into the closet like that in the first place. It was…” He searches for the right word in English for a moment. Disrespectful? Rude? Inappropriate? “Manhandling,” he decides on. “That you did not deserve.”

To his surprise, Jester giggles, a sly twinkle in her eyes. “Oh, Caleb,” she says, cheeks dimpling as she smiles. “You couldn’t drag me anywhere if you tried.” And she subtly flexes, muscles in her arms shifting.

Caleb laughs in surprised delight, and before he can stop himself, brushes Jester’s cheek with his thumb, the most touch he dares in this exposed hallway. The light in Jester’s eyes softens and warms, her lips slightly parted. Gently, Caleb touches her cheek again, and Jester tilts her cheek into his hand, eyelids fluttering shut. She has such long, dark eyelashes, and each freckle on her face is like a little speck of cinnamon. Fascinated, Caleb caresses his thumb along the curve of her cheek, down to skim over her plush lower lip. Jester sighs, and her cool breath washes over his skin –

Somewhere around the corner, a door opens and voices enter, chatting to each other. Jumping back guiltily, Caleb shoves his hands in his pockets. “Well,” he stammers, Jester looking up at him in a way that makes warmth pool in his stomach. “I’ll, um – I’ll see you.”

Jester grins, waving her fingers at him. “I’ll see you around.”

With a strange mix of relief and regret, Caleb slips back into his office, leaving the door ajar as he hurries back to his seat. Nott raises her eyebrows at him, apparently in the middle of organizing papers into stacks. “What did she want to talk about?”

“Oh, um – she’s having a hard time in my class and was feeling very down about it, so I think she just needed some reassurance,” Caleb improvises. “Nothing major.”

He doesn’t like the skeptical expression on Nott’s round face, but thankfully she doesn’t pursue the subject. Instead, however – “What happened to _this_ paper?” she says, brandishing a sheet of lined paper stained and dried faintly yellow, the ink-written letters on it blurred.

Caleb frowns at the paper, and then cold panic strikes his body as he remembers exactly the last time he saw that sheet: stuck to a sweat-covered Jester’s lower back as she sat up after he ate her out. “Give me that,” he snaps, snatching it from Nott, and then recovers. “It is – um – some notes, for a project. I spilled coffee on it.”

“It doesn’t look like coffee.” Nott narrows her eyes. “It doesn’t _smell_ like coffee.”

“You are my TA, not a private investigator hired to go through my things,” retorts Caleb. “Did you find the grading rubric?”

Dismissively, Nott says, “Oh, yeah, it was in that folder right there. Caleb…”

He pauses, eyeing her cautiously. “What?” 

Her eyes, round and golden, travel over him slowly, and a thoughtful expression crosses Nott’s face. “Nothing,” she says at last. “Never mind. Forget it.”

If anything infuriates Caleb, it is when people do stuff like this. “_What?_”

“I’ll tell you if it comes up,” promises Nott, and Caleb knows that is as good as he is going to get. “Now. Let’s get to grading, shall we?”

“All right,” says Caleb, and shuffles papers together in front of him with a sigh. “We shall.”


	7. Chapter 7

If Jester gets a taste of her own medicine the next time she comes in for office hours, well, she’s not complaining. It’s not _her_ fault that magnetic polarity is so boring and Caleb’s mouth so distracting. Crossing one leg over the other, she bites her lip and tries desperately to focus on the words Caleb’s saying, but oh, it’s hard, she wants to kiss him so bad –

Caleb sighs, fond and exasperated. “You’re not listening, are you?”

“No,” says Jester wistfully. She _really _wants to kiss him.

Taking off his glasses, Caleb rubs at his eyes and the semi-permanent circles under them. “Jester, while I appreciate your distraction, this is a fundamental concept that you will need to understand for the final –”

Planting her hands on the desk, Jester leans over and kisses Caleb square on the lips.

He makes a small sound of pleased surprise, but a second later pulls back with a guilty glance at the door. “Jester, no – not now –” And he puts a hand on her chin, gently keeping her back as she tries to steal a second kiss.

Jester pouts, but the grave look on Caleb’s face has no room for leeway. “Okay,” she says, soft and sad, and Caleb winces with regret. His thumb taps against her chin thoughtfully, and then he draws her in quickly for a kiss.

“Not now,” murmurs Caleb, his lips a breath apart from hers. “But come by tonight. I’ll be working late.”

Butterflies of delight burst into Jester’s stomach. “Okay,” she says, her forehead bumping into his. “Tonight.”

\--

The third time Caleb has sex with Jester, he swears it’ll be the last. And as much as he hates to, he says as much to Jester, as she puts her shirt back on with her hair still mussed and a post-coital flush still on her cheeks. “Okay,” laughs Jester, and bends to put on her shoes. 

I mean it, Caleb swears to himself, and he holds that all through the next class and through office hours. And then he has to stop by the Arts building at the end of the day to drop a book off for another professor, and he runs into Jester in one of the otherwise-empty studios with pastels smeared across her hands and face and the strap of her tank top falling off her shoulder and baring the upper curve of one smooth breast, and…

The fourth time Caleb has sex with Jester, he _swears_ it’ll be the last.

And the fifth.

And the sixth.

By the seventh, with Jester curled up in his lap happily afterwards, Caleb drops his head to her hair and quietly admits to himself that maybe, this is becoming a thing. Jester looks up curiously as he sighs, her finger tracing along the underside of his jaw. “What is it?” she asks.

“Mn,” says Caleb, closing his eyes. Her hair smells faintly of peppermint shampoo. “Nothing.”

“_Ca_-leb…”

Sighing again, Caleb hides his face in her neck, not wanting to admit failure to her and therefore himself. Jester squirms in his arms, bare feet kicking, and says, “Is this when you pretend this is the last time we’ll ever have sex again?”

Caleb sits back to narrow his eyes at Jester, who raises her eyebrows back at him. “I – no – maybe,” he protests, fingers tapping on her unclothed thigh. “Do I do that?”

Rolling her eyes, Jester says, “Like, every time.”

With his elbow on the chair arm, Caleb props his cheek on his hand and regards her with wry fondness. “Well, since you have me so well figured out, Miss Lavorre,” he says, “what do you think I should say instead?”

Humming thoughtfully, Jester leans in until her face is close to Caleb’s, lightly touching one finger to his nose. “I think,” she says quietly, “that you should just admit to yourself that you _like_ me, and you like having sex with me, way more than you care about the rules or what people might think.”

“Hmm.” Caleb kisses her so lightly, just his lips brushing over hers. “And if I said you were right, what then?”

Jester’s lips curl triumphantly, and she says, “Then kiss me.”

Tangling his fingers in her already-tangled hair, Caleb draws Jester’s lips down to his, tasting her cool and sweet like water on a hot summer’s day. “You and I should both get going,” he says regretfully. “They are predicting the roads freezing tonight.”

Jester sighs and kisses him one last time, and when she pulls back he can still feel the imprint of her lips tingling on his. “All right.”

She gets dressed and leaves; Caleb takes his time, not only pulling his sweater back on and pulling up his pants, but in cleaning up his desk, tidying scattered papers and the cup of pens and pencils that was inadvertently knocked to the floor. When he’s satisfied the office is in order, Caleb draws his coat on, picks up his bookbag, turns the lamp off, and leaves, locking the door behind him. But as he turns back around, a startled jolt hits him. Astrid stands several yards down the hallway between him and the way out, leaning against the wall, her arms folded around herself. She doesn’t look happy.

She’s seen Jester come out of his office, and she’s put together the pieces, Caleb thinks immediately, sick with dread. Bracing himself, Caleb approaches to walk past her, and as he does, he can see her eyes are faintly red. “Working late?” says Astrid hoarsely.

“So are you,” answers Caleb, pausing. Astrid’s high, tense shoulders and her drawn expression send a chill down Caleb’s spine; it’s a look he recognizes from her worst nights, when the world was eating her inside-out. “Is everything all right?”

Her teeth dig into her lower lip. “Have you talked to Ikithon lately?”

“Not for a few weeks.” The last conversation they had one-on-one was the one about the Tealeaf article. “Why?”

Standing up straight, she folds her arms tighter around her chest, eyes fixed on his. “Just be careful, all right?” Astrid says quietly. “Around him. Don’t – just keep your head on your shoulders.”

Caleb’s stomach sinks further, his worry shifting away from Jester to something darker, more nebulous. “Astrid, what is going on?” he asks in a rough whisper.

But Astrid shakes her head and steps back and to the side, moving around Caleb. “Just be careful,” she says, and passes him, heading down the darkened hallway and turning the corner.

Caleb shivers as she leaves, feeling the fingers of a strange inescapable doom reaching towards him. That’s a melodramatic thought, he reminds himself, echoing the advice of his therapist. It’s not how the future will probably be.

Wrapping his coat around himself, Caleb sighs heavily and proceeds out into the night.

\--

“This is bullshit,” Beau mutters, her eyes darting around the campus nurse’s office. “This is some fucking bullshit.”

In one hand she clutches a wadded-up dish towel stained profusely with red, wrapped and folded around her thumb. Jester pulls a sympathetic face from her perch on the examination bench as Beau paces the little room, wishing she could do something about Beau’s nervous energy. Her earlier attempt at lifting her spirits with jokes had resulted in Beau snapping at her, but when Jester asked if Beau wanted her to leave, Beau turned the color of putty and nearly grabbed at her before turning away and muttering, “No.” So Jester stays.

The door opens and Beau whirls around as the nurse enters, a cloud of white hair framing his dark smiling face, and the name tag on his forest-green scrubs reading _H. Shakäste, NP. _“Well, now,” he says, his voice smooth and deep as dark chocolate, and Jester likes him immediately. “What do we have here?”

Throwing herself onto the bench beside Jester, Beau unwraps the towel to reveal the still-bleeding, bone-deep cut in her left thumb, the result of a stubborn onion and a dull knife. Nurse Shakäste _tsks_ gently when he sees it. “Let’s see what we can do about that.”

When it comes time to stitch the wound closed, Beau grabs Jester’s hand with her uninjured one so tightly Jester suppresses a squeak. But she holds tight to Beau, anchoring her as Nurse Shakäste sews up Beau’s thumb. By the time he’s done and Beau is sent off with changes of bandages and two weeks’ worth of antibiotics, Beau is pale, sweaty, and ready to snarl at anyone who looks at her wrong. Jester waits until she gets Beau back into the car, and then suggests gently, “Do you want to get ice cream?”

“I _just_ got my cast off,” mutters Beau, glaring balefully at her bandaged thumb. “Fucking _bullshit._”

Jester waits patiently.

“Yeah,” sighs Beau. “Let’s go get ice cream.”

The ice cream place Jester likes to go to is only a few minutes off campus, a cute little place with brick walls, retro neon signs, and high driftwood tables with mismatched stools. Jester sits with her scoop of salted caramel fudge ribbon opposite Beau, who stabs at her cup of mint chip sullenly. Licking her spoon idly, Jester considers what Caleb’s favorite ice cream flavor might be: he drinks coffee a lot, so maybe something with coffee in it. Or rocky road, or something with those little chunks of peanut butter cups in them. She can see him liking peanut butter. Maybe she should surprise him with a pint of ice cream –

A short, butch young woman walks by behind Jester and makes eye contact with Beau, and they both freeze, staring awkwardly at each other. “Oh!” says Jester, surprised and delighted, and spins around to greet her. “Hi, Keg!”

“Oh, hey,” says Beau, with forced nonchalance, her voice definitely a notch deeper. “Long time, uh, no see.”

“Yeah,” says Keg, whose shoulders hunch uncomfortably under her battered leather jacket. She looks like she’s having a hard time meeting Beau’s eyes. “Sorry for, um – I left a note did you read my note imeanyoudidn’thavetoreadit –”

Still in that same determinedly casual tone, Beau says, “Oh, yeah, it’s fine – I mean, uh, yeah, you’re welcome –”

“What are you doing back in Richmond, Keg?” asks Jester, curious. Last time Keg was here, before the holiday break, she was only passing through looking for work. “Do you have a job here?”

Keg’s unease intensifies, her glance darting between Beau and Jester. “I’m here for the trial, they’re calling me as a witness,” she says, low. “You don’t – you know about that?”

Confused, Jester looks to Beau, who has her hands folded on the table and a hawkish look on her face. “Yeah,” says Beau heavily. “I know.”

“Wait, what – what trial?” whispers Jester, although stomach sinks with dread and she thinks she knows already –

“They’re trying Lorenzo for Molly’s murder.” Keg’s voice is as weighty as the grave, and she pulls up a stool to climb on top of it and sit with a sigh, the smell of cigarette smoke clinging to her clothes.

“Are they charging him for murder?” Beau’s eyebrows lower intently, all false bravado gone. “Or just manslaughter?”

Keg sighs, fishing a plastic-wrapped toothpick out of the little container on the table. “The defense is pushing for manslaughter, but yeah.” The flimsy wrapper shreds under her broad fingers. “Officially it’s murder.”

“_Good_,” growls Beau.

Staring down at the swirl of half-melted ice cream in her cup, all appetite gone, Jester wishes she could channel the same righteous anger as Beau, but all she feels is numb. “I’m surprised neither of you are getting roped into this,” says Keg. “Since you were there too.”

“They might have summoned me, I don’t know, I don’t know where half my fucking mail is going,” groans Beau.

“Oh, no, they called me on my phone, so if the police have your number –”

“They do, they took my statement that night –”

“Actually, no, they probably won’t call you,” muses Keg darkly. “You two were friends with Molly, you’re biased –”

“Not necessarily,” retorts Beau. “We might still be good witnesses, it’s up to the opposing attorney to examine for bias and discredit us in front of the jury –”

Beau’s in her element now, descending deeper into legal terminology, and Jester quickly loses track of the conversation. Slowly, she finishes her ice cream, the wooden spoon scraping against the bottom of the paper cup. I hope I don’t have to testify, she thinks guiltily. The thought of having to go up there and relive Molly’s death in front of everyone makes her feel sick.

“Hey,” says Beau suddenly, and Jester snaps out of her reverie. “Jessie. You still with us?” Keg, chewing on the toothpick, raises her eyebrows at Jester.

“Yeah.” Jester’s voice comes out high-pitched and fluty. “I’m fine, just, I have class in a little bit and I need to work on my sketches first, can we leave now?”

Beau swivels back to Keg, pointing at her. “You’re gonna be around for a while, yeah?”

Mouth twisted wryly, Keg shrugs and nods.

“Hit me up. We’ll talk later.” Beau slides off her stool, the rubber-footed legs squeaking against the concrete floor, and grabs her cup of ice cream. With a polite wave to Keg, Jester follows after.

Once back at the apartment, Beau disappears for a run, and Jester pulls out her big sketchbook to keep drafting ideas for the final exhibition her advanced fine painting class is having at the end of the year. Each student’s assignment is to produce and display three paintings on canvas, at least twelve by sixteen, and though Jester has no shortage of ideas, none of them seem quite right.

Pencil in hand, she lets her mind wander and take her hand with it, tracing charcoal paths on the textured ivory paper. A face takes shape, round head, almond eyes, melting ice cream mouth, surrounded by a cloud of hair. Jester moves her pencil on, a fat horse taking shape on the page, haunches, belly, chest, head all circles. She adds a horn and two little wings, and then a rainbow arcing out of its butt for good measure. The rainbow ends in a swirl of clouds that to Jester evoke traditional Chinese art, so she doodles a gnarled old tree, plump peaches hanging heavy from its boughs, and underneath lounges a monkey holding a half-eaten fruit, juice dribbling down its chin, its stomach distended and the pits of peaches scattered all around it. Tongue between her lips, Jester considers, and then adds a little top knot like Beau’s to the monkey, dresses it in a sash and loose pants, and props a staff up against the peach tree’s trunk.

It’s a whimsical image, with potential for some really nice colors, and Jester eyes it for a while, embellishing little details here and there. Maybe it’ll work for one of her paintings, though deep down, it doesn’t grab her the way it should. Folding over the corner of that page, Jester moves on to the next.

More faces appear under her pencil: a wide-mouthed goblin, a friendly cow-eyed woman, a little bird-faced girl. The Molly-shaped hole in her heart aches, and she lets her pencil move with that, tracing the line of his jaw, his straight nose, two closed eyes. A rough tangle forms his hair, the lines twisting like vines, and Jester adds a thorn here, a blooming rose there, draws a tear on his cheek…

Jester stares down at the sketch, and her heart twists, and she flips over the page so violently it almost rips. Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. Maybe, she thinks, the pencil in her hands trembling. Maybe.


	8. Chapter 8

The chapel at University of Richmond is small and quiet, not frequented by students on weeknights. Caleb likes to come here to sit and think, to get out of his office, and this evening, with the setting sun casting stripes of fiery light through the pointed arch windows, and the pews and rafters and flagstones melting into the shadowy corners, he can lean into the hard wooden bench and think idly about the world turning. The chill of the last March cold snap before the season changes hangs in the air, and Caleb tucks his hands in his coat sleeves, wrapping his arms around himself.

Footsteps echo quietly on the stone floor and Caleb turns around to see Jester standing in the doorway, wrapped in hat and coat and scarf. “Oh,” says Caleb, pleasantly surprised. “Hello.”

“Hi,” says Jester, looking a little sheepish. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you, but I was walking by and saw you in here...”

“No, it’s quite all right,” and Caleb slides over along the pew to make room for Jester, and only then realizes she might not want to sit with him. “Um.”

But she crosses over and sits with a swish of skirts, tucking her legs up under herself. The rays of orange light fall through the window, angling past Caleb and across Jester’s face as she gazes curiously around the nave. “I’ve never been in here before,” she says. “It’s nice.”

Caleb raises an eyebrow; the interior seems entirely too Gothic for what he’s seen of Jester’s taste. “Really?”

“Yeah.” She smiles slightly, eyes roving over the darkened altar and shadowy choir stalls. “I used to pray a lot when I was little, you know? For a best friend.”

Soft tender sympathy touches Caleb’s heart. “And did God grant you your request?”

Cheery, Jester says, “No. So I went out and found my own.” She glances up at Caleb with a smile both wistful and mischievous. “It’s worked pretty well so far.”

He wants to sit closer to her, to feel the press of her body up against his side, but though currently empty, the chapel is still a public space and anyone could walk in, so he leaves those few inches of cold air between them. “Did you not have a lot of friends as a child, then?”

Jester wrinkles her nose, mouth screwed up. “It was just difficult with my mom being a famous movie star, you know? Like I was always traveling with her so I didn’t go to a school, I had private tutors and stuff. And I mean, I had a lot of friends, like all the cast and crew and other people, there just wasn’t really anyone my age around most of the time.” She shrugs, careless, but a faint ache underlies her tone. “It was still pretty fun, though.”

Tucking his hands tighter under his arms to prevent himself from reaching out and touching Jester, Caleb leans back against the pew. He can just make out the dark shape of the crucifix at the back of the room. “I lost my faith a long time ago,” he says quietly, his words falling like small pebbles into the empty space. “Left it behind in Germany with my parents.”

He’s aware of Jester watching him but keeps staring straight ahead, conscious of the dark cracks slowly widening in his head. “What happened?” asks Jester, quiet and gentle.

Sighing, Caleb drags a hand over his face, beard scratching his palm. “I was – um,” and he clears his throat, dreading dragging his past out into the light. But he owes Jester his honesty, now more than ever. “When I was younger. Seventeen, eighteen. I fell in with some very bad people and some very, very bad ways of thinking. I was young, I was angry, I was stupid, I...” His therapist told him it wasn’t his fault, that he was as good as brainwashed and sucked into a cult, but Caleb still can’t quite believe that. “I said some things. To my parents, one night. That were...” Caleb refuses to relive the memory, but hot shame and guilt prickle him all the same, coiling in his gut. “Things I should not have said, that wounded them deeply. And then I left, for America, I had some... harebrained idea that I could do better here than I could there, that I would find people who better understood what I was ‘fighting for’ than at home.” His voice curls disparagingly around the propaganda he had parroted. “And then, well. I had no money, no friends, not much of anything. I am surprised they let me into the country, to be honest.”

“What did you do then?”

“Oh, I was homeless for a while, it was a bad time. But it had a way of reorganizing my priorities, of teaching me that what I believed was wrong, and more importantly, what I had lost. And then I was found by some very kind people, and with their help I could get back on my feet, get a visa, go to school. And here we are.” He smiles tightly at Jester, waiting for her to draw back, to lose the warmth in her eyes, to see him for who he once was.

But instead only sympathy graces her expression, and she reaches out to gently tuck a strand of Caleb’s hair behind his ear. The breath leaves him in a sudden rush and he drops his head, eyes closing, as unexpectedly potent relief washes through him. “What about your parents?” asks Jester softly. “Do you talk to them?”

Caleb lowers his face into his hands. “No, I, ah, burned that bridge pretty thoroughly,” he says. “About, um, a year after I came here – when I was getting back on my feet – I sent them a letter apologizing. Never got an answer. I think the meaning there is pretty clear.”

“No,” says Jester, distressed, “maybe they never got your letter, or maybe they _did_ send you a response but you didn’t get it, things can get lost in the mail –”

“Jester, you don’t know what I said to my father, you didn’t see his face.” Sometimes Caleb thinks it would have been kinder if he had just shot him. “They have every right not to want to talk to me.”

Curled up in her corner of the pew, Jester regards him sadly, auburn highlights shimmering on her hair and her eyes clear and crystal-gray in the red-gold light. “Okay,” she says, very soft. “But I still think you should try again, sometime.”

Rubbing at his face, Caleb suppresses a groan. The thought of trying again now, after all those years, makes him sick with nerves. “I am not even sure why I am telling you all this, I haven’t talked about this with anyone for years,” he mutters, and looks over at Jester with his chin propped on his folded hands. “Except...”

“Except what?”

“Except you should know who I am and what I’ve done, especially if...” Caleb takes a deep breath and steps off the edge of the cliff. “Especially if we keep doing what we are doing.” He clears his throat. “You deserve to know.”

Jester shifts forward suddenly and takes his face in her hands, her fingers cool on his skin, and says, “Caleb, you’re not a bad person. You’re not.”

He can’t help laughing a little at that. “My therapist says there is no such thing as good and bad people, only good and bad actions.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, there are some _pretty_ bad people out there.” Jester wrinkles her nose. “But you’re not one of them.”

Caleb smiles wearily at her, his heart lifting despite himself. “I will have to take your word for that.”

“Good,” says Jester fiercely, and lets go of Caleb to get to her feet, shaking her skirts out around her. A smear of dust catches her dark red tights on her calf, where she brushed against the bottom of her boots. “Now can we get out of here? It’s like, _really_ cold –”

Caleb gets to his feet, wanting desperately to take her hand but not daring to. And then as Jester passes in front of one of the illuminated windows, the light seems to dance around her and she looks so impossibly lovely that Caleb stops short, saying, “Jester –”

She stops, turning around to look at him with wide eyes. “Yes?”

They’re the only ones in this chapel. Heart pounding, Caleb dares to step up next to her and cradle her face in his hands, kissing Jester for a brief moment like she is a quiet place in a howling storm. Jester sighs dreamily, her long lashes brushing her freckled cheeks. “This is just like that one scene in _Tusk Love,_” she whispers.

Caleb’s brain screeches to a halt as he tries to recall if he’s ever heard of _Tusk Love_ and what that is. “I do not believe I am familiar with that work.”

Gasping, Jester seizes the front of Caleb’s coat and says, “Oh my gosh, you have _never_ heard of _Tusk Love_? It is the _best_ book, you have to read it –”

“Oh, it is a book, hm?” Caleb’s lips curl into a smile at Jester’s enthusiasm, even as he steps back to increase the distance between them to something safe. “What’s it about?”

“It’s set in a fantasy world and it’s about this half-orc named Oskar, and he falls in love with a merchant’s daughter named Guinevere, and they love each other _so_ much but they can’t be together because their families won’t approve…” Jester rambles animatedly, summarizing the book, as she walks out of the chapel with Caleb and out into the fading light of the sunset, their breath hanging cold in the air. “I have a copy, I’ll give it to you!”

“Oh,” says Caleb, his ears warming, “you do not have to do that –”

Jester smiles sweetly up at him. “I know, but I want to.”

How is Caleb supposed to say no to that? “All right,” he says, and it’s worth it alone to see the delight on Jester’s face. “I will check it out.”

\--

Clutching the carefully-wrapped copy of _Tusk Love_ in her hands, Jester trips down the hallway towards Caleb’s office. She plans to leave it on his desk for him, so hopefully his door is unlocked. It probably won’t be, though, muses Jester, and she immediately starts considering contingency plans. The book won’t fit under the door, and his office is on the second floor so she can’t climb in through the window. She could leave it in his mailbox in the faculty lounge, but that’s just not as intimate…

When she reaches his office, the heavy oak door is closed. Jester tries the handle hopefully, and to her delight it opens with a click, swinging open. She slips inside, bright sunlight streaming through the windows, and lays the book down delicately on top of the mess of papers on Caleb’s desk. She notices two stacks of essays and red pens, and wonders if maybe he’s here grading papers and she caught the right moment while he’s off getting coffee –

“What are you doing?” demands a shrill female voice.

Jester yelps and spins around, coming face-to-face with Nott Brave standing in the doorway with a plastic takeaway box of food in one hand and a suspicious frown on her face. Thrown off balance, all Jester can think to say is, “What are _you _doing?”

“Grading essays for Professor Widogast.” Eyes narrowed, Nott starts sidling into the room, still sizing Jester up. “Not trying to sneak a peak, are you? Or change your grade?”

“What? No!” protests Jester. “I was just leaving a book for C– for Professor Widogast.” Nott still looks prickly, so before she can start interrogating, Jester says, “I like your buttons,” and points at the necklace of multicolored buttons strung around Nott’s neck.

A pleased glimmer shines in Nott’s eyes, underlaying her wary glare. “Really?”

“Yes!” A fat blue button catches Jester’s eye, and she says, “Like that one, that is really pretty. Do you collect these yourself?”

“Oh, yes, most of them,” says Nott, preening. “I found this one at a thrift shop, and these are from a flea market, and my son sent me this one…” Affection warms her voice.

Everyone loves talking about their children, Jester knows that. “You have a son?”

Nott beams, all animosity gone. “I do, he’s very smart, let me show you his picture…”

Fifteen minutes later, Jester sits on Caleb’s desk with Nott, ohhing and awwing appropriately as Nott shows off her photo roll of a curly-haired, round-cheeked toddler, telling Jester the story of how she sends money back home to her husband and son who still live in Colombia until hopefully they can join her here. “That must be hard,” says Jester sympathetically. “Living so far away from your family.”

“It is,” sighs Nott.

“How do you deal with that” asks Jester quietly.

“Booze, mostly.”

Jester half-laughs, startled and not sure whether Nott is joking or not, and only then does she notice Caleb leaning in the doorway, his arms folded over his chest and a fond smile on his face. “Hi!” says Jester, slipping off the desk. “I was just talking with Nott –”

“Oh, no need to leave on my account,” says Caleb, stepping into the room.

“I have class soon,” says Jester, which is actually true, and besides she kind of wants Caleb to open his present when she’s not there. It makes it more of a little secret. (And also, if he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t have to pretend to be happy about it in front of Jester, but that’s _ridiculous_, of course he’ll like it, he loves books and this is a good book.) “See you later!” She winks at Caleb where Nott can’t see and whisks herself out before either Caleb or Nott can comment, a delighted glow hanging around her.

\--

As Jester leaves, winking at Caleb, he has to take a second to un-dazzle himself the way he does every time she pops up unexpectedly. “So you like her after all?” he says to Nott conversationally, crossing to his desk.

“She certainly seems nice.” Nott’s amber eyes track him as he sits down, and – oh. There’s a present for him, a smallish rectangular package neatly wrapped in a bright floral-patterned paper, with an extravagant pink bow spilling over it. “Oh, yeah, she left that for you.”

The package is the same size and shape as a paperback book, and Caleb knows _exactly_ what this is. “Ah, yes,” he says, putting it in his satchel. “Thank you.”

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

“Well, um, later,” falters Caleb, not wanting to unwrap a Harlequin romance in front of Nott. “We have more papers to grade, ja?”

To his surprise, Nott sighs unhappily as she sits down across from him, not reaching for the stack of ungraded essays. “You know what you’re doing, right?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” says Caleb automatically, although he has an inkling.

“With _her._ With Jester,” and Nott waves a hand at the door Jester just left through. “Caleb, I see what’s happening. The flirting. The gifts. The private conversations. The working late...”

Caleb freezes, his body going cold, alarm bells ringing faintly in his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, mechanic.

Somewhere between pity and worry, Nott says, “No, I think I do.”

“You can’t –” Caleb rubs his mouth with one shaking hand, points at Nott “– you can’t tell anyone about this, Nott, I swear, _no_ one –”

“Of course I won’t tell!” Her voice goes shrill and indignant, and Caleb reflexively looks to make sure his office door is fully closed. “Why would I? Caleb –”

“I don’t know,” he hisses. “I’m just – I don’t want anyone to know, okay?”

“Well, I don’t want anyone to know, either.” Nott folds her arms on the table, staring Caleb down. “Because if you get fired then _I_ lose _my _job, and I can’t send money to my family, and –”

“Nott, Nott, stop.” Squinching his eyes shut, Caleb rubs at his face. “I would... you don’t have to worry about that, okay? I would make sure you were taken care of –”

Nott narrows her eyes at him. “How? You can barely take care of yourself as it is.”

That _stings,_ and Caleb sits back in his chair mutely, staring at Nott. A moment later, her face falls, and she mutters, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

Doesn’t make it any less true, though, Caleb thinks, picking at the frayed threads in his shirt sleeve cuff.

“Listen, I... it worries me, that’s all,” continues Nott. “Not just for me, but for you, too. I want you to be safe, and happy, and if she makes you happy then that’s fine, just _please _be careful. If I figured it out, eventually someone else will too.” Genuine concern softens her face.

Caleb sighs, ruffling his hair thoughtfully before smoothing it back. “I know,” he says quietly. “I will be careful, I promise.”

“_Good._” Nott sighs the heavy sigh of a large dog coming to rest. “Now, are you going to open that present or not?”

Smiling, Caleb brings Jester’s present back up onto the desk, the trailing curls of pink ribbon tangling around his wrist. “All right,” he says. “But you have to promise not to laugh.”

“I would _never.” _

Carefully lifting off the ribbon and setting it aside, Caleb peels up the taped edges one by one, doing his best not to tear the paper. Nott silently vibrates across the desk from him with her barely-concealed urge to tear off the wrapping immediately.

The book that reveals itself is exactly what Caleb expected: a thick paperback, slightly battered, the cover glowingly illustrated with an extremely handsome and well-muscled green-skinned, shirtless man, his dark hair falling in a Superman-esque curl over his forehead and the hints of two fangs poking up from his lower lip. In his arms swoons a buxom blonde, her diaphanous blue dress clinging to her body through either magic or sheer willpower. A sweeping landscape of green hills and watercolor clouds forms the background, and the title _Tusk Love_ is emblazoned across the top in large swirling purple and gold letters. At the bottom of the cover, the author is listed as a Matilda Mercuria. “_Well,_” says Nott, and chokes down a guffaw. “I didn’t think that was your kind of book.”

“There is a lot about me you don’t know,” says Caleb dryly, opening the front cover to see if there’s an inscription on the title page. There is, written in glittery blue ink, in a bubbly cursive.

_Dear Caleb, I hope you like this beautiful story as much as I like you, _signed with a flourishing _J_ and a heart. A much smaller line of text below reads, _P.S. I drew a dick on one of the pages._

Caleb laughs, unexpectedly charmed, sliding his thumb over the soft-with-use edges of the pages. He wonders if this is a copy that was actually Jester’s, or if she just found it in a secondhand book store. He’s inclined to think it’s the first. Tucking _Tusk Love_ carefully into his satchel, Caleb sits back up and pulls one of the stacks of essays back towards him. “All right,” he sighs, putting his glasses on. “Which class are these for? 405? 385? They are all starting to blend together.”

“Hell if I know,” says Nott, flipping through her stack. “385, it looks like.”

Caleb stares at the rows and rows of Times New Roman, size 12, double-spaced marching across the paper like little ants one after each other. For a brief moment, he longs to be somewhere else, on a beach somewhere with a drink in his hand maybe, no responsibilities, Jester laughing at him from the water –

Locking that thought firmly away, Caleb drags the top essay towards him and uncaps his red pen, focusing on physics and physics only. Maybe, he thinks, if he and Nott get through enough of these, he can spend a couple hours tonight reading _Tusk Love_ instead.

Smiling to himself, Caleb gets to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to [RedTeamShark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedTeamShark) for the "This is just like_Tusk Love_" joke.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit sexual content.

“Where are you going for spring break?” Jester asks Caleb, pulling his sweater on over her own head.

“Hm? Oh, I am not going anywhere, I am –” Caleb pauses in the act of buttoning his shirt up, frowning, as he realizes Jester stole his sweater. “Hey, that’s mine.”

Scrunching her nose up playfully, Jester sticks her tongue out at Caleb from her perch on his desk, the yellow light of his lamp insulating them from the blackness of night outside. His sweater is a soft blue-gray, well-worn – maybe a little _too_ well-worn, Jester realizes, noticing the frayed cuffs and hem and the snags and the more-than-occasional cat hair dotting its front. But it smells like him, and the sleeves are long enough that they come over her hands, and it’s warm. “I’ll get you another one. This is mine now.”

Caleb flushes slightly, rolling his chair towards her and reaching out for her. “Jester, please, I would like my sweater back.”

With a sigh, Jester pulls the sweater off, baring her bra-clad torso. Caleb’s eyes flick over her hungrily, despite them having just had sex five minutes ago. The mark Jester left when she bit him to keep quiet as she came peeks out from under his collar, and Jester feels a little guilty but also a little proud, too. And it didn’t seem like Caleb minded all that much. “Fine,” she says, handing the sweater over to him. “But can I still buy you one?”

The flush on his cheeks deepens, and Caleb mutters uncomfortably, “No, that is quite all right, thank you.” Putting on his sweater, he emerges with hair ruffled all over his head and in his face, and he brushes it away with long fingers and a quick huff before tugging his cuffs down over his wrists.

Jester considers him as she reaches for her blouse and puts it on, slowly buttoning it up. “What are you doing for break, then?”

“Working, mostly.” Temple and cheek propped on his forefinger and thumb, Caleb smiles wryly up at Jester. “We don’t all get a vacation.”

That’s the _saddest_ thing Jester has ever heard. “The _whole_ time?” she says. “You don’t even get to get away just for a little bit?”

Caleb’s face closes off. “Vacations are expensive,” he says shortly. With another dry smile, he adds in a lighter tone, “Besides, what could be better than a quiet evening at home with my cat and a good book?”

While Jester can think of a lot of things, she’s not sure how many would actually appeal to Caleb. “You should come with us!” she says. “Fjord and Beau and I, we’re going to the Bahamas.”

“The Bahamas?” Caleb raises his eyebrows. “Nassau?”

“Yah, my mom is paying for us to stay at a resort.” Jester imagines Caleb at the beach, lounging under an umbrella with sunglasses on, sunscreen all over him, long skinny legs sticking out of his swim trunks, and his nose buried in a book. It’s an image both endearing and funny. “You should come...”

Shaking his head, Caleb half-laughs, “No. That is very generous, but no.”

Jester wants to protest, to keep pushing him, but if Caleb doesn’t want to then maybe she shouldn’t. “Okay,” she says, and she pulls her on sweater on, carefully adjusting her shirt collar over it. “I’ll send you lots of pictures!”

Caleb’s eyes widen briefly in alarm. “Not – not on my school email, please.”

A few weeks ago, Jester hinted at wanting Caleb’s phone number, and maybe she was too subtle about it (doubtful) but he completely ignored the hints. “Where should I send them, then?” says Jester, a perfect innocent angel.

From the look Caleb gives her as he winds his scarf around his neck, he’s not buying it. “You want my number, don’t you.”

Jester shrugs, saying, “I mean, _I’m_ fine, but if you want to see pictures of me in Barbados… on the beach… in my bikini… ”

Beleaguered, Caleb sighs. “I will give you my number,” he says, “on one condition.”

Jester raises her eyebrows, curiosity thoroughly piqued. What is he going to ask for? Sexy nudes? She has to text him in code? Maybe he secretly has a really weird kink where he wants her to send him pictures of her feet but covered in like, green slime –

“Let me know that you are okay, ja? Not every day, maybe just – when your plane lands, and after a few days, or...” He trails off self-consciously.

Jester’s used to people worrying about her. Mom would do that all the time. But this is different, somehow. Warmth flutters in her chest because Caleb _cares_, she’s more than just a sexy pastime, he wants her _safe_ –

“Sorry if that is too overbearing,” mutters Caleb hastily into her silence. “I know that you probably don’t want to be burdened by –”

Slipping off the desk, Jester plants her hands on Caleb’s knees and leans up into him, her face close to his. “I will text you _every day_,” she promises. “Every morning and every night! And I will call you, and send you pictures, and –”

“You don’t – you don’t have to do that,” laughs Caleb, blushing. He cups her face in one hand and Jester smiles, tilting her cheek into his palm. “But I appreciate the enthusiasm.”

If there’s one thing she’s good at, it’s enthusiasm. Jester kisses the tip of Caleb’s nose and says, “I promise.”

\--

True to her word, Jester texts Caleb practically the second she lands in the Bahamas. _just landed!!! _her text says, sent along with a selfie where she’s accompanied by her friends Beauregard and Fjord. Jester is beaming with excitement, Beauregard has a tongue out and two fingers up in an ironic parody of the peace sign, and Fjord hovers behind the girls, grinning sheepishly at the camera. Caleb can’t see much of what’s behind them, but what he can see makes him think airport.

_Glad to see you made it safely, enjoy yourself,_ he types out, and then second-guesses sending it. Does it make him sound too old? Too like a parent? Caleb taps his thumbs on his phone, considering for probably far longer than it’s worth. Eventually, unable to come up with a better phrase, he sends the original and on impulse tosses his phone back on his desk, away from the lecture notes he’s currently pulling together. Far enough away to theoretically prevent him from checking for a response every five minutes –

His phone vibrates immediately, screen lighting up with Jester’s message.

_thanks!! _😄😘

_what are u doing right now??_

Smiling, Caleb starts drafting an answer when his phone vibrates again with a new text.

_Hi professor widogast this is Beau I’ve taken jester’s phone she’s not allowed to text you right now because she nearly walked into a luggage cart because she wasn’t paying attention_

Caleb takes a moment to parse this, ending up somewhere between concerned, amused, and charmed.

_Thank you for looking out for her well-being._

_Yeah whatever don’t thank me that’s WEIRD_

Later in the day, Caleb ventures out to the faculty lounge for more coffee and to check his mail. There’s nothing of consequence in his cubby, but there is a very official-looking envelope addressed to ESSEK THELYSS, sent from the Virginia District Attorney’s office.

Essek’s mailbox is right next to Caleb’s, so he’s used to getting the odd misplaced bit of mail. But this is significantly more serious, and postmarked from before break started, and Caleb slowly turns the yellow envelope over in his hands. He slides the envelope into Essek’s box among the other pieces of mail, and then, considering, pulls out his phone and sends a quick email to Essek.

From: cwidogast@richmond.edu  
To: ethelyss@richmond.edu

Subject: Misplaced mail from the DA

I don’t know when you last checked your mail on campus but there is a letter for you from the District Attorney’s office that was placed in my mailbox accidentally.

Essek’s response comes within fifteen minutes, when Caleb is back in his office.

From: ethelyss@richmond.edu  
To: cwidogast@richmond.edu

Subject: Re: Misplaced mail from the DA

Thank you, I will come by to pick it up. Are you still on campus?

Caleb fires off an affirmative and sips his coffee slowly, watching the steam spirals rise. He desperately wants to ask Essek about what the missive says, although he knows it’s not a polite request. But something needles at the back of his brain, something about Mollymauk Tealeaf and the bit of local news he caught about a trial, and Ikithon’s dire warnings about keeping the university out of scrutiny. The article he read said Tealeaf was a theater student, and Caleb can’t imagine any sort of meaningful connection between him and Essek, but still…

A knock at the door interrupts his reverie. Caleb glances up and meets the gaze of Essek, lounging in his doorway in a stylish black wool coat, silver scarf, and tight dark-washed jeans. When he catches Caleb’s eyes, Essek smiles one-sided and waves the yellow DA envelope at Caleb. “Thanks for catching this,” he says.

“No problem,” responds Caleb automatically, and then before he can catch himself, “I hope it is nothing too serious.”

Raising an eyebrow, Essek says, “We’ll see,” and starts ripping open the envelope, pulling out a sheaf of papers. As he scans the top one, his brow slowly furrows deeper and deeper, and he lets out a deep, “Hmmm…”

Despite burning with curiosity, Caleb stays silent, slowly turning a pen over between his fingers. “Interesting,” mutters Essek, and folds up the papers.

At this point, him not explaining is just plain rude, and Caleb raises his eyebrows. “Well?” he prompts, when only more silence ensues.

Essek sighs, stuffing the papers back into the envelope. “Subpoena,” he says succinctly. “Not unexpected, though.”

“For the Tealeaf case…?”

“The what? Mm, no.” Straightening, Essek tucks the envelope in the interior pocket of his jacket. “Nothing nearly as exciting as that. My former landlord seems to have gotten themselves in a little bit of trouble and apparently my observations are needed.” He smiles wryly and tips a two-fingered salute at Caleb. “Anyway, thanks again for letting me know. Don’t work too hard, you know we’re on spring break, right?”

Glancing over the papers spread all over his desk and the painfully unfinished lecture notes, not to mention his own personal research projects languishing in the background, Caleb spreads his hands ruefully. “I would be here less if I had less work to do. Care to help?”

Essek laughs. “Have a good afternoon, Caleb.”

“You too.”

Despite what Essek said, it continues to nag at Caleb over the next few days, and when he runs into Dean Ikithon on campus, the unease compounds. “Ah, Widogast,” says Ikithon, his hands tucked in the pockets of his long gray coat, standing in between Caleb and the doors into the dining hall. “Not taking a vacation?”

Biting back a response of “Neither are you, sir,” Caleb nods, acutely aware of his own tatty sweater. The seasons are turning, but slowly, and a damp chill still hangs in the air.

“How is the Lavorre girl getting on?”

“Jester,” Caleb automatically corrects, and then curses internally as his ears grow warm. “Ah. Improving somewhat.”

“Remember, she doesn’t need to be an A student, she just needs to pass,” says Ikithon convivially, like he’s discussing an old mutual friend or the scores of a favored sports team. But his eyes track Caleb’s expression with a hard canny glitter.

Clearing his throat, Caleb nods.

Ikithon smiles, although it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Good,” he says, rocking back slightly on his heels. “Good. Enjoy your day,” and he brushes past Caleb, the flap of his coat blowing back and catching Caleb on the arm. The hairs on the back of Caleb’s neck prickle.

Shuddering, Caleb enters the dining hall, eerily quiet with only a few students and faculty scattered through it. He misses Jester, suddenly and powerfully: misses her bright cheerfulness and the way she can fill a room with her laugh.

He could text her and tell her that, Caleb realizes, standing off to the side of the kiosk as they prepare his coffee. A tempting thought, and yet, what if that’s too much? What if she doesn’t want to be bothered with him yearning after her while she’s off having fun in the Caribbean?

She sends you novel-length texts every night describing what she did during the day, Caleb reminds himself. She definitely wants to hear from you.

“Caleb?” calls the barista, and Caleb steps forward to accept the steaming cup. Wrapping his hands around its warmth, Caleb takes a comfortably scalding sip and exits the dining hall, back out into the foggy morning.

To admit he feels Jester’s absence is a vulnerability Caleb doesn’t feel prepared to expose yet, not even to himself. But Jester has demanded his honesty from the moment he first started falling for her, despite his best efforts. Sighing, Caleb stops in the middle of the empty courtyard and pulls out his phone, staring at his latest conversation with Jester. _I miss you, _he types out, but doesn’t send. Three simple words, with nowhere to hide behind them. Bald as the still-leafless trees in the courtyard.

Caleb exhales slowly, his thumb hovering over the send button.

It’s stupid, really. He’s known Jester’s naked body and confessed his darkest sin to her and yet he can’t say such a simple thing.

His therapist would tell him that there’s strength in vulnerability.

Squinching his eyes shut, Caleb sends the text, and then shoves his phone in his pocket and walks hastily off, heaving out a breath. At least this is Jester, he probably won’t have to wait for a response long.

The afternoon passes with no response. She’s probably out doing something, Caleb tells himself, driving home through a gray drizzle. Like ziplining or riding horses on the beach. Surely when she returns in the evening she’ll answer him.

When he arrives home, Frumpkin demands his attention, and there’s a certain relief in coming back to the routine of feeding Frumpkin, of brushing him, of hearing his diesel engine purr as Frumpkin lies draped on Caleb’s shoulders while Caleb putters around the kitchen making dinner for himself. “What do you think, Katze?” he asks, chopping onions. “Will she respond?”

Frumpkin rubs his cheek on the side of Caleb’s head.

Smiling slightly, Caleb says, “I will take that as a yes.”

It’s not until much later that night, when he’s about a third of the way through _Tusk Love_ (Guinevere and Oskar having managed a midnight rendezvous in a ruined church to profess their love for each other), that his phone buzzes with a response. Well, it’s a text from Jester, but it’s not so much a direct answer to his comment as:

_we got tattoos !!!_

A selfie accompanies her missive: a slightly blurry shot of Jester from chin to chest. A sprawling, intricate pattern in dark brown ink curls across her collarbone and upper chest, full of spirals and petals and little curlicues. It’s undeniably beautiful, but it’s a massive statement piece, and Caleb stares at it for a while, trying to reconcile conflicting appreciation and alarm. But before he can come up with an appropriate response, Jester texts him again.

_dont worry its just henna_ 😜

_i think fjord and beau are getting real ones though_

He can practically hear her giggling, and Caleb’s lips curl in a smile.

_It’s very beautiful._

_thaaaaanks_ 💖💖💖💖

_want to see more?_

_Tusk Love_ lying upturned in his lap, Caleb props his head against one hand and raises an eyebrow. Does she mean she got more tattoos?

_Sure._

It takes quite a few minutes for her response to come in, enough that Caleb is about to return to _Tusk Love._ But the picture she sends him makes Caleb drop the book back down, every thought of interspecies pulp romance novels gone from his head.

This time the picture shows Jester from head to waist as she holds the phone up above her head, smiling cheekily up at it, her dark tousled hair framing her face. Her other arm wraps over her bare chest, both covering her breasts and pushing them up and together, the henna filigreeing above them. In the wide bathroom mirror behind her, her smooth skin curves unbroken and uncovered from her shoulders, down her spine, and all the way to the peachy fullness of her nude bottom perched against the counter.

Caleb swallows hard, his groin drawing tight with desire, and he sends, _Can you call? I would like to hear your voice._

When she rings he picks up immediately. “Hello,” says Caleb, husky.

“Hi,” breathes Jester.

Hearing her voice is like a gulp of ice water soothing a parched throat, and Caleb lets his eyes close for a moment. “Are you alone?”

“Yeah, Beau and Fjord are out getting hammered or something.”

“And you are not with them?”

“I don’t really like drinking,” says Jester, and despite her dismissive tone there’s a hint of self-consciousness underneath that.

“Nothing wrong with that,” reassures Caleb, who despite having a fondness for the occasional well-crafted lager, rarely indulges. “Are you in your hotel room?”

“Mm-hm.” She pauses, and then adds, light and teasing, “I’m not wearing any clothes…”

Caleb pictures her at the open glass doors of her room, staring out at the beach as a tropical breeze blowing the gauzy curtains around her and ruffling her hair, the moonlight caressing the soft curves of her naked body. A powerful urge to sink into the warm Caribbean waters with her, their intertwined intimacy suspended in the ocean and only the moon and stars witnessing their touches, hits Caleb. “Will you lie down on the bed?”

“Okay, but you have to lie down on your bed too,” counters Jester. “And take off all _your_ clothes.”

Only too happy to comply, Caleb gets up from his chair and goes behind his bedroom partition, saying, “Of course, give me a couple minutes.” Leaving his phone on the bed, he strips, neatly folding his clothes over his wooden chair and laying his glasses on his nightstand, and then grabs the little bottle of lube from his nightstand drawer before laying himself down and stretching out with a sigh. “Jester?” he says, picking up the phone. “Are you there?”

“Mm-hmmm... Are _you_ alone?”

“Yes.” Well, except for Frumpkin still asleep in the living room, but Caleb’s not going to introduce him to this conversation. The air is chill on his exposed skin, his blanket soft underneath him, and he looks up at the plasterboard ceiling and imagines a night sky instead. “What are you doing now?”

Jester hums softly. “Just laying on the bed…”

“I wish I could kiss you.” The admission falls as easy as a petal from Caleb’s lips. “Touch your lips, pretend that I am kissing you.”

“All right,” Jester giggles softly. “I’m kissing you back.”

Caleb runs a thumb over his own lips slowly, and if he closes his eyes he can almost make believe it’s Jester. “Those are my fingers touching you,” he says, his hand coming to rest over his collarbone. “Tracing under your jaw, down along your neck…”

Jesper’s intake of breath on the other end of the phone is just a whisper. “And then what?”

“And then…” In his mind’s eye, Caleb paints a picture of Jester reclined on a large white bed as deep and soft as a cloud, her dark hair haloed around her head and a flush blooming across her skin like watercolors, the ornate henna decorating her chest. “Lower, across the line of your collarbone. Just one finger, back and forth.” He pauses, wanting to make sure Jester’s still with the conceit. “You are doing that, right? Like I describe?”

“Yes…”

“Good.” His hand holding the phone is starting to cramp, so Caleb puts it on speaker, turned down low, and lets the phone lay on the pillow next to his head. His free hand drifts down, across his ribs, brushing towards his groin. “Lower still, over your breast. Squeeze it like I would.”

Jester makes a faint, high sound. “Okay,” she says, breathless.

“Keep doing that, please.” Caleb’s throat draws tight as he pictures Jester caressing herself, her eyes closed, her full pink lips parted. “Slow and gentle. Pull on your nipple a little, twist it, press at yourself… Does it feel good?”

“_Yeah._”

Caleb clears his throat, one hand still encircling his own neck, the other fumbling to flip open the cap on the lube bottle. “Both hands, I would use both hands. One on each breast –”

“I can’t,” says Jester, small. “I’m holding the phone.”

Lube finally opened, Caleb pause in the act of squeezing some out. “You can put it on speaker.”

“But I want to hold you,” admits Jester, even smaller.

Caleb’s chest wrings tight and he closes his eyes with a sigh, wrapping one hand around his stiffening cock. “That’s okay,” he says, husky. “You can just use one hand. Keep caressing yourself, please, Jester, I…” His voice falters briefly, caught between longing and uncertainty, of wishing Jester was with him, of wishing he was with her, of twisting how they fit together a new way.

Her breathing in his ear gradually grows heavier, throatier. Caleb times the slow slide of his hand up and down himself with her inhales and exhales. “Jester,” he says again, and her breath catches. “I am – touching your sides now, sliding my hand down over your ribs to your hip, my palm open, my fingers spread across your skin…”

Jester sighs, high and faint. “Caleb…”

“Ja?”

“Are you touching yourself?”

His stomach jumps, cock twitching in his hand. “Ja_…_”

“Where?”

“I have… one hand on my cock, and the other on my chest,” says Caleb, his thumb resting against the pulse point in his neck. Each beat of his heart thuds a little faster, one, two, three. “Is that where you want them?”

“Yeah,” sighs Jester again. “I just wanted to know how I should picture you.”

Caleb strokes himself again, his head tilted back into the pillows. “I slide my hand along your inner thigh, in between your legs –” Jester’s little gasp sends a thrill of excitement down his spine, down his cock “– lightly, lightly, teasing, just brushing over the lips of your pussy…”

High and faint, Jester keens. “Just like that,” Caleb breathes, his stomach muscles trembling with the effort of not coming yet. “Now stop.”

Jester whines in protest. “Maybe not yet,” says Caleb, letting a smile creep into his voice. “I’m touching you on your breast again, the other one, this time.”

“You _are_,” sighs Jester, strained. “Caleb…”

“Yes, Liebchen?” He startles himself with the endearment, though it feels right in his mouth.

For an answer, she whines again, her breathing faster and sharper. “I’m taking my time,” says Caleb, stroking himself deliberately, one foot braced against the mattress. “Massaging your breast, grasping it, squeezing slowly…”

Jester lets out a long, shuddering sigh. For a few minutes, Caleb contents himself with listening to each yearning sound she makes, feeling himself grow harder and harder. When the intensity of her reactions start to taper off, Caleb says, “Now, back down again, please.”

Relief tinges Jester’s sigh. “All the way?”

“All the way.” He pauses for a moment, then says, “I touch you gently, parting your folds, teasing one finger up to your clit… and staying there.”

“_Caleb_,” gasps Jester.

“Don’t move,” he says, his heart hammering in his chest, his cock tight and hot. “Not yet, Jester, not yet…”

She whines again, and Caleb pictures her squirming deliciously against the white bedding. “Please…”

Maybe he would draw it out longer, build up her wanting more, but Caleb is desperate for release himself. “Go on,” he gasps, stroking himself faster now. “Come for me, please, Jester.”

Her breathing goes sharp and fast and Caleb’s pitches to match, his hand hot and slick around himself, his whole body burning, and then Jester cries out like he’s never heard her before, free from the need to be quiet and secret, and Caleb groans as his body pulls tight and he spills himself out over his hand, orgasm slamming into him like a hurtling train.

Eyes closed, Caleb pants, the sweat cooling on his body. He can hear Jester’s shaky breaths on the other end of the call, each one gradually gentling. “Jester?”

“Yeah?”

Taking his phone with his clean hand, Caleb brings it back to his ear, a long sigh rolling through him. “Was that good for you?”

Her laugh, tired but pleased, ripples over Caleb like cool water. “It was so good, Caleb, how was it for you?”

Caleb smiles, post-coital contentment pulling down at him, and yet he can feel Jester’s absence in the cool air next to him, in the empty space of his bed. “Very good,” he says. “Thank you.”

\--

Jester wakes in the morning to bright sunlight streaming through her windows, gradually, her body soft and relaxed, her mind floating in pleasant thoughtlessness as she gradually comes to consciousness. Stretching her naked body luxuriously under the sheets, she gazes out at the blue expanse of the ocean beyond her sheer curtains and thinks idly about swimming, about walking out of her room and right onto the beach and into the calm morning waves. If there weren’t other people on the beach, she would.

Eventually Jester gets up and showers, thinking about last night and the phone sex with Caleb as she soaps her body. It had been good, more than good, and yet something about it was… different. Not quite like all the times they fooled around in his office, or an empty classroom, or crammed into a locked closet. It felt more… free. Just her, and Caleb, no worries of someone overhearing, not even in the next room…

With a start, Jester realizes she has no idea if Beau and Fjord came back to the hotel last night.

Finishing her shower in a hurry, Jester towels her hair dry and throws on the yellow shorts and floral blouse she was wearing yesterday, and hurries down the hallway to Beau’s room. “Beau…?” she says, knocking on the door. “Hello? Beau?”

Pressing her ear to the door, she can just make out a muffled groan. Jester smiles and sing-songs, “Beau-auuuu, I know you’re awaaaaake…”

Beau groans again, something that sounds suspiciously like “Fuck off.”

“Let me in? Please? Beau…” Jester leans against the door, tapping her fingers against it. “I won’t leave until you do…”

There’s another muffled curse, and a heavy thump, and then the sound of shuffling approaches the door. Beaming, Jester steps back as the door opens to reveal Beau, the bedsheets cocooned around her, her eyeliner smeared across her bleary face and her tangled hair poking out from under the hood of her sheets. “What,” says Beau.

“Hi!” says Jester brightly. “I just wanted to make sure you came back to – why is Fjord on the floor?”

“Huh? Oh.” Beau grunts and looks over her shoulder at Fjord, who lies fast asleep and snoring in a sprawl of blankets on the floor at the foot of Beau’s bed. “Yeah, I think he came back at like four a.m. last night and wanted to be let in so I let him in.”

Jester raises a skeptical eyebrow. All she can see of Fjord is one bare, tanned shoulder and the back of his tousled head. “Let’s wake him up,” she says, pushing past Beau into the room.

“What, Jester, no – I am _so_ hungover, oh my god…” Beau shuffles after her, the trail of her sheet dragging on the floor, the door swinging shut behind them. “Leave him alone.”

Plopping down to sit on his back, Jester pokes at Fjord’s shoulder. “Fjoooooord,” she says. “Wake up.” Behind her, Beau grumbles and collapses back onto the bed.

He snuffles and snorts in his sleep, and then his snores resume their rhythm. Jester tilts her head so she can see his face smushed into the carpet, his mouth open, a little dark patch of drool underneath it. Sliding off of him, she lies down with her face close to his and boops him on the nose. “Wake uuuuuup…”

Fjord grunts again and his eyelid flutters, opening slowly.

A wide smile spreads across Jester’s face and she waggles her fingers at him. “Good morning.”

“Wh – huh!” Fjord starts awake, jumping back, eyes wide with surprise, and then flops onto his back with a groan. “Christ, Jester, you startled me.”

Giggling, Jester kicks her feet in the air. “Did you guys have a good night last night?”

Beau, now entirely hidden under the sheets again, says something entirely unintelligible. But as Fjord stares up at the ceiling, a slow frown of horror dawns on his face. “I… don’t… remember…” he says slowly.

Oh. Jester knew he was drunk, but he didn’t seem _that_ drunk… “How much don’t you remember?” she asks cautiously.

“Well, I remember the first few bars, and I remember us getting tacos, and I remember the margaritas, and after that things get… fuzzy, and then not at all.” He looks over at Jester, worried. “Did we… why does my _chest_ hurt?”

“Oh,” says Beau, surfacing from under the sheets. “Oh no.”

Fjord sits up, the blanket sliding off his bare torso to reveal a fresh, reddened tattoo right underneath his sternum – a round yellow eye, slit-pupiled, stark against his brown skin. “What the _fuck_,” says Fjord, staring down at it and then looking up helplessly between Jester and Beau. “Is that a tattoo?”

“Yeah,” says Beau, staring back at him. “You were talking about how your like mentor-slash-father-figure had a tattoo just like that and you were totally going to get one so you could be like him – you don’t remember the tattoos?”

Fjord’s look of increasing horror is as good an answer as words.

“We got tattoos too!” says Jester, to make him feel better. “Well, I just got henna, but look!” She pulls down the collar of her shirt enough to show the top of the swirling paisley pattern. “The tattoo guy was _really cool, _he had an eyepatch and looked like a _turtle – _Beau, what did you get?”

Slowly, a strange look on her face, Beau pulls one arm out of the sheet cocoon – her shoulders are bare, and Jester wonders if she’s naked underneath (maybe Fjord’s naked underneath his blankets too, maybe they’re _all _naked!) – and shows the elaborate design inked on her inner bicep: an eye, surrounded by filigree and an equilateral triangle, dotted lines raying outwards from it. It looks heart-stoppingly familiar, and for a second Jester can’t place it, and then – “For Molly,” says Beau. “You know. It was on the back of all his tarot cards.”

“Yeah,” whispers Jester, and Fjord bows his head.

“Did you really know someone with an eye tattoo like the one you got, though?” Beau demands of Fjord.

He grimaces, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Yeah, my foster dad, he had one, I never asked why though or what it meant. Maybe I should have, then I’d have a better idea about… this.” He snorts down at the eye on his chest.

“Wait wait wait a minute, hang on.” Wrapping the sheets more securely around herself, Beau gets up on her knees, staring intently at Fjord. “You don’t remember the tattoos or anything after?”

“No…?” says Fjord, dragging the word out apprehensively. “Why?”

“So you don’t remember that red-haired chick you went off to fuck?”

“_What?_”

“Oh boy,” sighs Jester.

\--

As the first session of PHYS 110 after spring break convenes, students dragging themselves in, Caleb pretends to himself he’s not looking for Jester. She’ll be here, he tells himself. And you’ll have to teach class like normal, so really, there’s no point anticipating it, just a regular day –

Jester enters the classroom, a golden tan spread across her skin, cheeks flushed and streaks of her hair bleached brown with sun, and a brilliant smile spreads across her face when she sees Caleb. “Hi,” she mouths, sliding into her seat.

Unable to help the answering smile on his face, Caleb ducks his head, but he risks a glance up at Jester again, hoping she can read his happiness to see her on his face. _Hello,_ he says in his head, a strange buoyancy swelling inside him.

Class flies by, Caleb barely aware of what he’s teaching. When he ends the lecture, he packs up as slowly as possible, waiting impatiently as the students amble out, chatting to each other, Jester lingering halfway across the classroom with her gaze fixed on Caleb…

The second the door closes behind the last student, Caleb starts forward from behind the podium, striding towards her, and Jester runs forward and jumps to hug him and Caleb just manages to catch her, his hands under her solid thighs, her legs wrapped around his waist, as she laughs joyously and plants a big kiss on him. “Welcome back,” says Caleb, once he can speak again.

All the light in the room warps to Jester as she smiles. “Thank you,” she says. “It’s good to be back.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit sexual content.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” sighs Fjord, turning his half-eaten cookie over in his hands. “It’s kind of growing on me, you know? Like I thought it was kind of freaky at first, but now...”

“But now you’re getting used to it,” muses Jester, chin on her hand and elbow on the kitchen table of her apartment. The windows are open, letting in spring sunshine and the occasional twitter of birds. “I like it.”

Fjord raises his eyebrows. “You do?”

“Yeah, I think tattoos are cool –”

The apartment door opens, and Beau walks in slowly, staring down at a letter in her hands. “Oh,” she says, when she realizes both Jester and Fjord are in the room. “Hey.”

“Beau?” says Fjord. “Everythin’ okay?”

Turning, Beau holds out the letter to him with an unsteady hand, a strange, horrified expression on her face. The letter itself is printed on a heavy ivory paper, and Jester catches the glimpse of an official-looking logo stamped on the top. “ ‘Dear Miss Beauregard Lionett,’ ” reads Fjord, as Jester rises up in her chair and leans over the table, craning her neck to read what’s on the paper. “ ‘On behalf of Stanford Law School, I am pleased to announce your admission to our academic program for the Fall of’ – Beau, this is fantastic! Congrats!”

“You got into _law school!_” shrieks Jester, leaping up to hug Beau so tightly she lifts her off the ground, startling a laugh out of her. “You did it!”

“Yeah – yeah, I did –” Back on her feet, Beau disengages from Jester with a wry smile. “Fuck. I got into _Stanford, _holy _shit –_”

She collapses into the chair Fjord pulled out for her, her head braced in her hands, and Jester slides the cookie jar towards her. “I can’t pay for tuition,” says Beau hollowly, staring into the abyss of student loans. “I do lighting and sound for shows as a gig, I don’t have _money –_”

Jester says, “My mom –”

“_No._ No. NO,” says Beau, pointing at Jester. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure if your mom wants to help it’ll be super generous and _way_ more than I actually deserve, but no. I’m doing this on my own.” She sighs heavily, staring at the letter. “I don’t know if I even _should_ go.”

“What – Beau, you spent over two hundred dollars on tests and application fees alone.” Fjord frowns at her in disbelief. “Why wouldn’t you go?”

Beau mumbles something about “not being law school material.”

Snorting, Jester says, “I’m pretty sure if you weren’t law school material they wouldn’t have accepted you.”

“Well, maybe they made a mistake,” retorts Beau. “Maybe they mixed my letter up with someone else’s. Maybe I look better on paper than I do in person. Maybe I’ll get there and find out I don’t fit in at all –”

“Or _maaaaaybe,_” says Jester, taking a cookie out of the jar and holding it out to Beau, since she clearly won’t eat one on her own, “you’ll get there and find you’re _super awesome _at being _the best lawyer there is –_”

Beau eyes the cookie suspiciously. “What kind is this?”

“Snickerdoodle,” says Jester, and wiggles the cookie temptingly at Beau, cinnamon and sugar glittering on its pale surface.

Sighing, Beau accepts the cookie and takes a bite, her shoulders slumping in defeat. “Doesn’t matter,” she mumbles. “I can’t afford it. Not now that dear old Dad disinherited me.”

“Something will work out.” Jester takes Beau’s hand in both of hers, Beau’s grip callused and the knuckles of her slender fingers scarred, and smiles at her. “I know it will.” It’s hard to believe it won’t, not with her and Caleb making it work despite the odds, and Fjord having survived his mysterious encounter with the redheaded lady, and the three of them together eating the cookies Jester made.

Beau manages a wan smile in response. “We’ll see.”

\--

Pale green leaves sprout from the branches of the magnolia trees across campus, unfurling tender in the warm air of spring. Caleb can’t help smiling at them as he gets in his car and pulls out of the staff parking lot, at this little reminder that winter is finally over. Campus is startingly empty, most students gone for the weekend, but as Caleb stops at an intersection he sees one he recognizes: Jester. Glancing over at him, Jester lights up with a smile, and she runs up to his car.

Frowning, Caleb rolls down his window. “Jester, what are you –”

“Hi!” she says brightly, leaning on his car door. She wears a short dress of silver crushed velvet that glimmers in the sunshine, a little pink purse slung across her body, and she smiles at Caleb with all the jubilation of spring. “Are you going home?”

Caleb glances around, anxious someone will spot them together, though currently the sidewalks are empty. “I – ah – yes, I am done with classes for the day –”

“Going somewhere fun for the weekend?” Jester’s cheeks dimple charmingly, and Caleb longs to lean out of his window and kiss her, but –

In his rearview mirror, he catches sight of an elegantly-dressed, silver-haired figure exiting a building, and Caleb’s heart vanishes from his chest. “Thelyss,” he hisses. “Jester, we can’t – he can’t see us together –”

She glances back and a mischievous sparkle lights her eyes. In one swift motion, Jester reaches in through Caleb’s window and unlocks his car, and then yanks open the back seat door and tumbles in. “Jester!” snaps Caleb, his eyes on Essek striding down the sidewalk towards him. “What are you doing?”

“Hiding!” she answers cheerfully, sliding down in between the seats. And then Caleb has no time to protest because Essek is walking right up to him. Caleb takes one hasty glance to make sure Jester is out of sight before plastering a friendly smile on his face as Essek walks up to his car.

“Hello, Caleb,” says Essek, smiling back, the sunlight glimmering on the lavender silk of his shirt. “Done for the day?”

“Ja,” says Caleb, acutely aware of Jester under the back seat. “I have some errands I need to be running –”

“Can you fit in one more?” says Essek pleasantly. “My car’s in the shop and I could use a ride to the bus station.”

Caleb stares at him, and he swears he can feel the seat shake from Jester’s silent giggles. “I, uh…”

Essek’s grin widens. “Come on, after all the times I gave you a lift, I believe you owe me a favor…”

The multiple times Caleb begged a ride from Essek are undeniable, and he cringes internally. “Of course,” Caleb says, constricted, and leans over to open his passenger-side door before Essek can go for the back seat. “Please, get in.”

Striding around, Essek slides into the passenger seat, closing the door as Caleb puts his foot to the gas pedal and chugs through the intersection, trying as hard as he can not to clench his hands around the steering wheel. “Any weekend plans?” says Essek conversationally.

Between Jester under his backseats, Essek beside him, and keeping his attention on the road as the streets of the university campus give way to the tangle of downtown Richmond, Caleb can barely think about the future. “Oh, nothing exciting, I don’t think…”

“Don’t tell me you plan to get some work in,” laughs Essek. “Caleb, my friend, there is more to life than teaching.”

Caught between merging into the far left lane and the mental image of Jester slipping into his office at night, Caleb sputters. “I know, I have just not had a lot of opportunities to, er –”

“To get out? You should.” Essek claps a hand on Caleb’s shoulder as Caleb eases through a left turn. “Go out, see the town, maybe meet someone new! It would do you good.”

There’s a stifled squeak from the back seat and Caleb coughs hastily, hoping to mask it. “Oh, I don’t know…” he says hoarsely.

“Are you seeing anyone now?” says Essek, regarding him curiously. “No? I know your fling with Astrid was a bit of a disaster, but perhaps now it is time to bounce back – more fish in the sea, and all that –”

The seat starts shaking again and Caleb clears his throat savagely to cover any stray giggles. “I don’t think I’m ready for that just yet,” he manages.

Essek shrugs, making a noncommittal gesture. “Fair enough, I suppose. Still, keep your options open. You never know what might turn up.”

This time Caleb has a hard time keeping a straight face himself. “I will keep that advice in mind,” he says, strangled.

With a smooth chuckle, Essek leans back in his seat. “Just an observation.”

Caleb turns another corner and spies the sign for the bus stop with a sigh of relief, merging over into the rightmost lane. “Well, here we are,” he says, pulling up to the curb and stopping.

“Thank you for the ride,” says Essek, getting out of the car. “Enjoy your weekend, Caleb.”

“You too,” manages Caleb, and checks his left mirror before pulling back into the street, speeding away as fast as he dares. “Oh, Christ,” he sighs, shoulders slumping in relief, as Essek and the bus station dwindle in his rear view mirror. “Jester, you can come out now.”

A sudden peal of laughter bursts out as Jester climbs up and onto the back seat, her head flung back with hilarity. “‘You should meet someone new,’” she manages in between giggles, doing a credible imitation of Essek’s accent. “‘I think it would do you good.’”

Caleb sighs, glancing back at her in the rearview mirror. “I’m glad you were able to control yourself,” he says dryly, and changes over to the left lane to make a U-turn.

“Hang on.” Jester frowns, leaning up over his shoulder. “Where are you going?”

“Back to university, to drop you off –”

“What? No!” protests Jester. “Let’s go out, let’s do something –”

Caleb jumps in alarm as she starts climbing over and into the front seat. “Jester, what are you doing –”

“It’s a beautiful spring day, let’s go out, let’s have _fun_!” She slides into her seat with a sigh, and Caleb _tsks_ at her to buckle her seatbelt. Rolling her eyes, Jester buckles in. “Come on, Caleb…”

Caleb wants to grumble and complain, but the thought of turning around, of separating from Jester, when the freedom of Friday afternoon beckons, is suddenly intolerable. “Where would you like to go?”

The dazzling smile that spreads across Jester’s face is reward alone. “Can we go to the boardwalk?”

“The beach? That is an hour away from here –”

Jester’s smile gentles. “When was the last time you saw the ocean?”

Caleb remembers exactly when, and it was almost five years ago, when he first came to Virginia. The realization that it’s been that long punches him in the chest, leaving him breathless. “All right,” he says, and mentally plots a route between here and the closest pier. “Let’s go.”

Beaming, Jester leans back in her seat, and then looks up at the car ceiling. “You have a sunroof!”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, I don’t really open it.” Caleb glances up at the square hatch in the roof. “I’m not actually sure it opens anymore –”

Reaching up, Jester grabs the handle of the plastic sliding door and pushes it open. It sticks halfway through and she has to jerk it the rest of the way, blue sky now visible above them. “Oh,” says Caleb. “I guess it does open.”

Jester pushes the button and the glass slides back in stops and starts, the mechanism whirring loudly. A warm spring breeze rushes in, ruffling Caleb’s hair, and Jester laughs and sticks her hands up, fingers wiggling in the open sunroof. As they escape the city gridlock and head onto the freeway, weight drops from Caleb like heavy scales cracking and falling away. He rolls his window down to let in even more air and lets out a deep sigh, a small happy bubble expanding in his chest. He’s almost tempted to push his sleeves up, but that’s not a conversation he’s ready to have just yet. Not in the car, at least.

Leaning over, Jester turns on the radio, but the only sound that comes out is static. “The radio is definitely broken,” says Caleb, as she fiddles with the dial, nose scrunched up. “I think something went wrong with the antenna but I haven’t gotten it fixed.”

“Do you have a cord I can plug into my phone?”

Caleb laughs, “This car is far too old for that.” They’re well out of the city now, the freeway lined with trees just beginning to put out leaves, looking like a fine green mist covers their branches.

Nose wrinkled even more, Jester says, “Do you have any music at all?”

“The CD player works. There are some in the glove compartment.”

“_CDs,_” says Jester, in what Caleb can only assume is a tone of mingled bemusement and disgust. Popping open the glove compartment, she pulls out the stack of a half-dozen CD cases and starts rifling through, eyeing each of their covers. “Classical, David Bowie, classical, Beatles, classical… What’s this one?”

Glancing over quickly at the CD in question, Caleb says, “Ah, that is an Israeli rap group, they’re actually quite good –”

“Don’t you have anything _fun_?” scoffs Jester, shoving the CDs back in the glove compartment.  
“Like, Madonna, or Britney Spears, or K-pop, or…”

“_K-pop,_” repeats Caleb, in the same way that Jester said, “_CDs._”

“Okay, but it’s _really good_,” says Jester, turning to face Caleb animatedly. “There’s this one band, called BTS, they’re _so good, _I love them so much_…_”

She continues waxing eloquent about BTS and Block B and more as they speed down the road towards the coast, the number of cars and trucks on the road gradually thinning as the blue sky arches over them and the sun gradually tilts towards the horizon. As they reach the coast, the light has become golden, pouring down like honey as Caleb navigates through the streets of the seaside town, looking for parking near the boardwalk. “There!” says Jester, pointing, and he makes a hard right. “There’s a lot.”

He parks and pays the meter and then he and Jester stroll onto the boardwalk, entering the casual flow of pedestrians. Caleb keeps a sharp eye out, on high alert for anyone who might recognize them, but he can’t pick out any faces he knows among the chattering tourists in bright pastels and young people laughing to each other in groups and pairs. The ocean, the same vivid violet-blue as Jester’s eyes, stretches off into a foamy gold-white horizon, the sky above it deepening in shades of yellow and blue. In the warm afternoon light, the weathered planks of the boardwalk and the brightly-colored facades of the shops and booths lining the boardwalk glisten, and the sharp smell of brine and seaweed fills the air. Caleb inhales deeply, gazing out at the infinite ocean, and the bubble in his chest grows even bigger.

“It’s so blue,” murmurs Jester at Caleb’s side. The golden light hangs around her, turning the stray strands of her hair into a halo and the silver of her dress into blazing metal. She leans into Caleb ever so slightly, her shoulder brushing his arm.

“It is,” he agrees, and something in his soul yearns to go out, to leave the shore behind and lose himself in the medley of light and water. “Are you hungry?”

“_Starving_.” Jester smiles up at him impishly. “Let’s get hot dogs.”

They purchase two hotdogs from a yellow-and-white umbrella’d vendor, the sausages fat and glistening brown, pillowed in between the buns and smothered under caramelized onions and shredded cheese. Caleb eats his slowly, savoring the smoky sweetness of the onions and the meaty bite of the hotdog, while Jester powers through hers in neat little bites. Finished, she licks onion drippings off her fingers carefully, eyes on Caleb, and a warm shiver runs down his spine. Her gaze flicks down his front and back up again. “You have a little something, there,” she says, pointing at his chest.

Caleb looks down and sure enough, there’s a brown splotch from the hotdog drippings smack on the front of his white shirt. “Ah, Scheiße,” he says, using a napkin to dab at it. Even after soaking up as much as he can, the smudge remains a glaring mark. Hopefully it will wash out, he would hate to have to get rid of a perfectly good shirt just because it’s stained –

“Here,” says Jester, rooting around in her purse, and comes up with a little stain remover pen. “I got it.”

Holding onto his remaining quarter of hot dog, Caleb stands still as Jester uncaps the pen and comes up to him. “Hold still,” she says, and puts one hand on his chest to hold his shirt down as she scrubs the pen over the stain, the tip of her tongue sticking out in concentration. As if by magic, the mark disappears, and Jester smiles up at him. “There.”

Her hand stays where it is, fingers resting lightly on his heartbeat, and Caleb’s breath catches briefly. “Thank you,” he says, smiling back at her.

“No problem,” she says cheerily.

They share an order of golden-brown curly fries that lightly coat Caleb’s fingertips in salt and grease, and then Jester gets a chocolate ice cream that Caleb attempts to pay for and she slips money into the vendor’s hand before he can get there, sticking her tongue out at Caleb playfully.

As continue their promenade down the boardwalk, Caleb still glances around to make sure no one he knows recognizes them. But no accusing eyes or shocked faces materialize, and as they pass by a large family, Jester draws closer to Caleb’s side to make room, and her hand brushes his.

It tingles like a splash of ice water, and Caleb glances down at her, his chest tightening. Jester gazes out at the ocean, where a triangle of pelicans glide through the sky, but her hand touches his again, this time lingering too long to be an accident.

Holding his breath, Caleb carefully slides his fingers in between Jester’s, her skin smooth and soft on his, his world narrowing to the careful interlace of their hands. Her touch presses into his, their fingers curling together, and Caleb looks around anxiously again but no one spares them a second glance.

They’re holding hands.

They can hold hands.

Caleb squeezes Jester’s hand, and she returns the gesture, her eyes flashing up to his, a flush on her cheeks and her lips slightly parted. By now they’ve reached the end of the boardwalk, the shops quieter and the crowd dwindling. Coral has begun to touch the sky as the sun sinks lower towards the sea, and the breeze is beginning to chill. “Shall we return?” says Caleb.

Though she tries to hide it, disappointment lingers in Jester’s voice as she says, “To the university?”

“I just meant to the car.” Caleb hadn’t had a plan beyond that, but now that Jester brings it up, he’s not ready for the evening to end either. “And then back to Richmond, perhaps, but there are other things we can do from there.”

Jester lights up with a smile, and she swings Caleb’s hand a little. “Okay,” she says, and stands on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Like what?”

As they walk back, Caleb deliberates. A movie is the classic choice, but if he only has a few precious hours to spend with Jester, sitting silent in the dark next to her doesn’t seem like an effective use of time. Out for dinner, maybe, but they already ate. A bar, then? Caleb doesn’t much like bars, except…

“There is a place I would like to take you to,” he says hesitantly, as they approach his car. “Maybe not your type of place, but…” Jester raises her eyebrows, curious. “A little bar, back in Richmond.” Not all that far from his apartment, come to think of it. “Will you come there with me?”

Her fingers still linked through his, Jester leans up into him, her eyes deepening to indigo in the twilight. “Show me,” she says softly.

They speed back into the city through the gathering dusk, the trees forming shadowy arches against the inky-blue sky. Navigating through the city streets, Caleb finds parking in an alley behind a row of restaurants and bars. Exiting the car, he walks around to open Jester’s door, but she’s already out, her eyes gleaming with curiosity. “Shall we?” he says, offering her his hand.

Jester takes it. “We shall.”

It’s been years since Caleb was last here, but he remembers the dingy back door, marked with a faded sign reading _Cat’s Cradle._ Opening the door, he slips into the dim hallway, Jester at his side, passes the bathrooms and a supply closet, and enters into the main room. A purple light tinges the stage where a live band has begun setting up, a black-dressed woman adjusting her microphone, and little tables and booths ring a worn-down wooden dance floor. The bar that stretches along the back wall is dented metal, and the rows of bottles behind it gleam dully in the low, oily light. A number of people are already here, scattered around the tables and bars, talking and laughing with each other, and Caleb checks but he knows none of them.

“Oh,” says Jester softly. “I like it.”

“You do?” Caleb glances down at her in surprise. While he’s fond of this place, he had his worries that it wouldn’t suit Jester’s sensibilities.

“Yeah.” Eyes roving over the interior, she continues, “It’s very _you_.”

They get a table against the brick wall, lit by a miniature little lamp, the fringed lampshade glowing yellow-green. The table grain is distinct under Caleb’s fingers, rough but waxy, as he slides a drink menu over at Jester. “What would you like?”

Jester’s nose wrinkles as she scans the list of drinks. “Do they have milk?”

“Milk?” The simplicity of the request stymies Caleb briefly. “I, ah, am not sure, but I can ask.”

“Thank youuuuu.”

Fifteen minutes later, Caleb returns triumphant to the table with a lager for himself and a glass of milk for Jester. “The bartender gave me a very strange look when I asked for this,” he says, setting down the milk in front of Jester. “I hope you appreciate all I went through to get it for you.”

“My knight in shining armor,” murmurs Jester, taking a demure sip.

“A knight? Hardly,” snorts Caleb, sitting back down. “More like the grumpy old wizard shut up in a tower with his books.”

Jester’s cheeks dimple, her long lashes casting shadows in the yellow lamplight. “A good wizard, though.”

The image of his parents crosses Caleb’s mind. “Maybe.”

He takes a long, slow drink of his beer, savoring the slightly-bitter breadiness of it. Across from him, Jester scans the room over the top of her milk glass as the band strums the opening chords of their first song, a jazzy, offbeat number. “Beau got accepted into law school,” she says quietly. “Stanford.”

“That is quite the accomplishment,” says Caleb, bemused. “Tell her congratulations from me.”

Jester smiles briefly, her hands cupping her glass. “She thinks she shouldn’t go because she won’t belong, but I keep telling her that’s silly.” Shrugging, she rotates the glass between her fingers. “So that’s what _she’s_ doing after she graduates.”

Ah, thinks Caleb, pieces clicking into place. He waits a moment, and then breaks the silence with the question Jester is waiting for him to ask. “And what are you doing after you graduate?”

Sighing heavily, Jester taps her hands on the table. “I think I’m gonna go back to LA, with my mom,” she says. “At least for a little bit. I don’t know.”

Caleb had assumed this long ago but only now does the meaning really sink in, slow and piercing like a knife in the gut. “I see,” he says, one finger carving a path through the condensation on his glass. He can feel Jester’s eyes on him, expectant, searching, and his heart pounds unsteadily for a moment. “I will miss you,” he says, very quietly.

“You can still see me.” Jester smiles, confused. “We can visit each other, you can come spend the summer –”

“Jester, I…” Caleb spreads his hands helplessly. “I don’t get all summer off, and besides, flights are expensive, I cannot take the time off, I cannot afford the airfare –”

Defiance sparks in her eyes. “Then move to LA –”

“_Jester._”

“Or maybe you don’t! Maybe I’ll stay here instead –”

Conflicting emotions tear at Caleb, for as much as he wants her at his side – “I cannot ask you to do that,” he says hoarsely. “Jester, you cannot – I would not want you to throw aside your plans, your dreams, for –” He sighs, rubbing his forehead, frustrated with his job and the three thousand miles between LA and Richmond and most of all himself. “For someone like me,” he finishes.

“Well, maybe that’s what _I _want,” demands Jester, stubborn, but with a thread of pain underneath. “Maybe I want _you_, Caleb, haven’t you figured that out yet?”

His heart twists. “I – I know,” says Caleb, reaching out to brush her hand with his fingers. “I just need reminding sometimes, ja?”

Her eyebrows slanted up in sympathy, Jester takes his hand in hers and squeezes it. “We don’t have to figure it out right now,” she says softly. “We have a couple months.”

“Yeah.” A couple of months is not that long, but Caleb manages a wan smile. “All right.”

The band finishes their song and begins [another, slower tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgMSDiavcOM), the saxophone weaving a melancholy melody between the pulse of the piano and drum, the singer crooning throatily into the mic. “Let’s dance,” says Jester suddenly.

Alarmed, Caleb glances over his shoulder at the dance floor, where a handful of couples sway back and forth in each other’s arms. “I am not very graceful, unfortunately…”

Jester’s warm smile is like a benediction. “That’s okay, I am.” She gets to her feet, tugging down the hem of her silver dress, and holds out one soft hand to Caleb. Once again, Caleb finds himself powerless to resist her, and once again he doesn’t mind. Taking her hand, he gets to his feet and walks onto the dance floor with her, pulling her near with a hand at the small of her back.

Eyes deep as the ocean, Jester steps up close to him, one hand on his arm and the other resting on his waist. She starts to rock from foot to foot, moving Caleb with her as she rotates, and he tries not to think too hard about it but instead slip into the music with her.

This close, Jester smells of vanilla and peppermint, and though her touch is light Caleb feels each imprint of her fingers on him as distinctly as if she were molding him out of clay. And maybe she is, because gradually Caleb’s steps lose their stilted awkwardness, as he lets her guide him into the rhythm.

The singer’s voice increases in intensity, her plaintive strains filling the low-ceilinged room. Jester’s arms slide around Caleb, wrapping close as she slowly rests her head on his chest, her body softening against his. His hand fitting into the dip of her spine, Caleb brings the other up to Jester’s shoulder, folding her close with a sudden tender protectiveness. His heart aches at the thought of letting her go, tonight or three weeks or three months from now, and that’s when he knows. He has crossed an irreversible threshold.

Heart pounding, Caleb drops his lips to Jester’s head and closes his eyes, his hand on her shoulder tangling gently in her hair. And though he knows that this moment won’t last, that sooner or later he and Jester will have to return to their clandestine meetings and secret glances, for now he can lose himself in the music, and her, and let the rest of the world disappear.

\--

Jester peers out the car window curiously as Caleb pulls into a driveway on a residential street, modest homes crouching underneath magnolia and pecan trees. “I thought you lived in an apartment,” she says.

“I do,” says Caleb, stopping the car, the automatic light of the garage turning on. “Technically it is a renovated garage that I rent out, but yes.” Pausing with his hand on the keys, the engine still idling, he says, “I, ah – I know I have asked this before, but you are protected, yes? For sex?”

Rolling her eyes, Jester says, “Yes, of course I am, I’m not a _baby_, I know what I’m doing –”

“No, I just meant,” and Caleb’s ears turn red, his cheeks flushing. “I don’t have any condoms, so I should know if I need to go out and buy some.”

“Oh.” Jester regards him softly, her face warming as the full implications of his statement sink in. “No, it’s okay, I’m good.”

A little relieved smile curls his lips. “Good.”

This time Jester waits as Caleb gets out of the car, letting him open the door for her, and takes his hand as she gets to her feet. His fingers curl through hers, secure and anchoring, and Jester’s heart flutters, her stomach swooping in the same heady way it did on the dance floor an hour ago, Caleb’s arms wrapped around her and his heart beating under her ear. Falling, but with no fear of hitting the ground.

Caleb unlocks a side door and ushers Jester in, flicking the lights on. “Sorry, it is a bit… ah… plain,” he says, grimacing slightly. “I am not much of an interior decorator.”

But just like _Cat’s Cradle_ made perfect sense to Jester in how it would appeal to Caleb, so does this room make sense as where he lives. Only one bookcase, but it overflows with books both well-worn and kept in perfect order, and the carved wooden screen that she guesses hides his bedroom, and the faded brocade pattern on the armchair, and – “Frumpkin!” she gasps, as the leopard-spotted cat raises his head from his curled-up repose on an ottoman. “Can I pet him?”

“Of course you can,” says Caleb, affection strong in his voice. “He loves people. Frumpkin, come here, say hello to Jester.”

Frumpkin blinks at her sleepily, not showing any signs of getting up.

“Hello,” coos Jester, walking over and crouching in front of him. He doesn’t draw back, even when she starts scritching under his chin and cheeks, instead closing his eyes lazily and leaning into her hand. “Oh, what a good boy, yes you are…” 

She tears herself away from Frumpkin to beam at Caleb, who sits at one of the two folding chairs at the table, unlacing his shoes. “I love him,” she pronounces. Head still resting on her fingers, Frumpkin starts purring, and Jester gasps in delight. “He likes me!”

“Of course he does, he has excellent taste.” Arms folded over his chest, Caleb smiles fondly at both of them.

That warm, heady feeling rises up again, and Jester stands, walking over until she’s close enough to Caleb to lean down, her hands on his biceps, and kiss him softly. “Tonight was very nice,” she says, taking in every detail of his blue-gold eyes, the fine freckles dusted across his hooked nose, the curve of his lower lip above his copper stubble. “Thank you.”

“You are very welcome,” says Caleb. “Thank you for making it happen.”

Jester grins. “Professor Thelyss was right, you need to go out more.”

Fingers teasing with the hem of her dress, Caleb smiles wryly. “With you, I presume?”

“_Well..._” With a sly smile, Jester slides onto his lap, her dress riding up slightly as her thighs straddle Caleb’s. “That is _kind_ of the idea...”

She leans in, kissing Caleb slow and sweet like honey, his hands traveling up her thighs and over her hips to grasp her waist. “You certainly have a lot of ideas,” murmurs Caleb, in the spaces when his lips are free. “Got any more tonight?”

“One or two,” and Jester wraps her arms around Caleb’s neck and kisses him with all the force she can muster.

Caleb sucks in a breath, hands digging into her sides, and his lips press hot against hers. He pulls Jester so close into him she can feel his ribs against hers, and her inner abdomen clenches tight as she slides her tongue against Caleb’s, her lips parting hungrily.

“Jester,” groans Caleb, his hands raking up her back. “Come to bed with me.”

She gasps, kissing along his neck, his hands grasping her shoulders. “Yes, Caleb, I will –”

He groans again and drops his head to her collarbone and inhales deeply. Combing through the copper waves of his hair, Jester traces careful spirals over Caleb’s scalp and the back of his neck, and as her nails catch on his skin Caleb shivers. Slowly, Caleb raises his head, and the burning want in his eyes sends a thrill down Jester’s spine. But he kisses her so deliberate and almost gentle, like each kiss holds its own precious weight, that Jester trembles, her breath hanging heavy on her lips.

“Come,” murmurs Caleb, gently pushing her off his lap so he can stand. Getting to her feet, Jester links her fingers through Caleb’s, pulling him in for another kiss, moving back, pulling him in again. The room is not big, and in only a few steps they make it to the wooden screen, Caleb gently steering Jester around it to his bed.

The bed is as efficient as the rest of the room – a mattress resting on a wire frame, sheets gray, a navy-and-green plaid blanket thrown over it. But what catches Jester’s eye is the paperback book sitting on the little side table, a bookmark tucked about two-thirds of the way through its pages. “You’re reading _Tusk Love_!” she exclaims, delighted.

“Well, ja,” says Caleb, a little nonplussed. “You gave it to me.”

“Yes, but I didn’t think you would actually _read _it…” Plopping down on the bed, Jester picks up the book and opens it to the bookmark. Caleb has stopped right at the start of Chapter Eighteen, as Guinevere struggles desperately to escape the evil prince that captured her, unaware that Oskar is on his way to rescue here. “Oh,” sighs Jester happily, “you’re almost at my favorite part.”

“I thought you said their first kiss was your favorite part.” Caleb sits beside her, tucking his chin on her shoulder, and dances his fingers over her bare thigh. “Or was it when they declared their true love to each other?”

Amusement glints in his eyes, but his tone is too soft for Jester to take offense. “They’re all my favorite,” she declares, closing the book and setting it back down on the side table. Turning back to Caleb, she plants her hands on either side of his hips, tilting her face up for a kiss. “What’s yours?”

“I don’t know, I have not finished the book yet.” With his thumb, Caleb brushes a stray hair off Jester’s cheek, his fingers staying to cradle her face. “I will let you know when I do, though.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” and he kisses her, hand cupping her jaw.

Closing her eyes, Jester melts into the kiss, every line of her body curving towards Caleb. At first, their kisses stay soft and sweet, but everywhere Caleb touches her, warmth simmers under her skin, and she wants more. Sliding her fingers inside Caleb’s collar, she caresses along his neck and collarbone, catching his lower lip in her teeth and tugging gently. “Mmn,” says Caleb, pulling her closer towards him, but the movement overbalances them both and they topple to the side onto the bed, Jester giggling as she lands half on Caleb.

“Hi,” she says, and kisses him, Caleb rolling flat on his back underneath her. His arms circle around her waist, pulling her further onto his chest, and as he does something tilts and shifts inside her, like the vertigo of stepping to a diving board high above a swimming pool. Taking Caleb’s face in her hands, Jester kisses him again, his skin warm, his short beard scratching her palms. Desire twists inside her, and she angles her hips into Caleb’s, her stomach flat on his.

Caleb pulls her dress up, past her hips, past her waist, and Jester breaks away from him so he can drag it over her shoulders and off of her head. Casting the silver velvet to the side, Jester sits up straddling Caleb’s hips, glad she’s gotten in the habit of wearing matching pretty underwear all the time, just in case. Today her bra and panties are black lace, trimmed with white ruffles and with little white bows on the front, and Jester tosses her hair, arching her back and letting Caleb admire the view. Eyes glittering, cheeks flushed, Caleb curls his lips in a smile, and he drags his fingers up and down her thighs, following the contours of her quadriceps. As Jester leans back down, he cups her chin, pulling her in close for another hungry kiss, his body shifting under hers.

Dragging her lips away, Jester kisses along the knife-edge of Caleb’s jawbone, down along his neck, and to the little hollow under his throat. Pulling his shirt collar aside, she presses her lips to his collarbone, and begins unbuttoning his shirt so she can kiss down his chest and sternum, all the way to the sparse ginger hairs peeking above his waistband. Caleb sighs, head tilted back and lips parted, as Jester pushes his shirt open, sliding it past his shoulders. When she pauses, though, his eyes flash up to hers, guarded.

They still haven’t crossed this barrier of his, and Jester slides two fingers along the edge of his shirt, waiting. She aches to know, not only with curiosity, but to remove one more obstacle between them, and yet she knows better now than to push Caleb too far. His throat bobs as he swallows, and after a moment, Caleb nods. “All right,” he says hoarsely.

“Whatever it is, it’s okay,” promises Jester.

Eyes closed in a wince, Caleb says, “I know. You’ll – you will see.”

Slowly, giving him time to object, Jester slides Caleb’s shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. He has to sit up a little to pull his arms completely free, throwing the crumpled off-white linen aside, carefully not meeting Jester’s eyes. His arms are skinny, dotted with freckles, his elbows knobby, and ragged, long-healed burn marks spot his inner forearms from wrist to elbow.

Jester can’t help her little catch of breath, but before Caleb can do more than look pained she reaches out and takes one of his hands gently in hers, easing his arm towards her and tilting his scars towards the light. “What happened?” she asks softly, smoothing the pad of her thumb over the disfigured skin.

Sighing, Caleb lets his head fall back and stares up at the ceiling. “I had a hard time when I was younger,” he recites. “The school I went to was very difficult, very high pressure both academically and socially, and I...” He clears his throat. “I turned to fire, to relieve some of that pressure.” His voice is harsh with condemnation, either for himself or the system that failed him, Jester’s not sure.

“Matches?” she asks quietly, tracing the roughly-circular edge of a burn.

Caleb shrugs. “Matches, lighters, whatever I could get my hands on.” Sighing heavily, he forestalls the question Jester has her lips parted to ask. “My parents found out eventually, but I, ah... I left them shortly after that.”

“_Caleb_,” whispers Jester, and she doesn’t want to cry because she knows it’ll upset Caleb but the tears sting her eyes all the same. His lips press together unhappily, his free hand on her knee with his thumb rubbing her gently. She doesn’t know what to say, _I’m sorry_ feels so ineffective, and she wishes desperately for a moment that she could heal the scars. At a loss for words, she presses an impulsive kiss to his arm and presses his palm to her cheek.

Eyes misty himself, Caleb says, “Thank you,” and manages a smile. “I am all right now, I swear. I just have to live with the scars.” He shrugs with a determined carelessness that reminds Jester a little bit of Beau. “And you never know what people will think.”

“_I _think you’re beautiful,” Jester bursts out, and her cheeks grow hot but she doesn’t take it back, and the wide-eyed look on Caleb’s face makes it all worth it. “I do!”

Flushed scarlet, Caleb mutters, “That’s not – that’s nonsense, I’m not – completely not true –”

“You _are_,” insists Jester, and because she doesn’t know how else to make him believe it, she lunges in and kisses him, curling her fingers in his hair, and his bare skin is _so_ warm against hers. Caleb starts slightly and then wraps his arms around her, pulling her in close as he drives his lips up into hers. Gasping happily, Jester kisses him again, her back arching under his hands as he caresses down along her torso.

He grasps her butt, fingers digging in not quite enough to hurt but enough to make Jester whine. She rocks back and forth, heat building in her core, Caleb’s grip urging her into motion. Panting, Jester touches her forehead to Caleb’s, her hair falling to frame both their faces. “Caleb,” she says, lips hovering above his.

His thumbs hook in the waistband of her panties. “Ja?”

The same feeling of vertigo overtakes her, her toes curled on the edge of the white diving board, the expanse of pool far beneath her bright turquoise. “Nothing,” whispers Jester, because to put what she feels into words, the tenderness and protectiveness and yet the desperate longing and burning desire, is too much at the moment, and though she can shape her lips around the word _love_ she hangs on, not ready to breathe life into it yet. Instead she says it by kissing Caleb, the word on her lips moving to his.

Their kisses build in heat, in intensity, until Jester’s breath comes shaky and Caleb burns like an ember underneath her. His hands snake up her back, unclasping her bra, and slowly takes it off her, the straps slipping off her shoulders. Eyes fixed hungrily on her, Caleb cups her breasts in his hands, thumbs rubbing over her nipples, and Jester keens faintly, pressing her face into his neck. Each twist and tug of his fingers reaches deep inside her, and Jester rolls her hips again, rubbing against the growing bulge in Caleb’s pants.

With a sudden heave, Caleb flips Jester over, rolling on top of her. Jester gazes up at him starry-eyed, his warmth covering her, his arms braced on either side of her, his copper hair falling in tousled waves around his face. Leaning in slowly, he kisses Jester slow and heavy as molten rock, the long weight of his body pressing into hers. The hardness between his legs rubs in between hers, tantalizing, and she clutches at his shoulders, using the mattress as leverage to arch herself up into him. “Jester,” breathes Caleb, kissing at her neck, pleasure rippling over her skin, and Jester tilts her head back with a soft moan. “Jester, let me, I want to be inside you –”

The cerulean water, shimmering below her. Jester nods, tentative at first, then with more vigor. “Yes,” she gasps, stomach clenching. “Yes.”

Caleb unbuckles his pants hastily, taking them off with his boxers. Freed, his erection stands stiff and flushed, and Jester dances her fingers over it, wanting, curious, making Caleb shiver and groan. As he bends down again to kiss her, his hand travels over her abdomen, slips under the band of her panties, and slides two fingers back and forth over her folds, dipping into the slickness and out again. Keening, Jester throws arms over her head and writhes deliciously, toes curling. The kiss Caleb presses to her lips is hot and tremulous, sweat dampening his hair at the roots.

Bracing himself with one arm under Jester’s head, Caleb reaches back again to tug off her panties, and Jester helps him, lifting her hips so she can shimmy out of the scrap of black-and-white lace. It hits her, for a moment, that this is the first time they’ve both been completely naked with each other, and the _ease_ of it surprises her, how natural it all is. Still slightly damp, Caleb’s fingers walk back up Jester’s thigh, sliding down the crease of her groin, and back in between her labia, brushing her clit enough to make her squirm. “Slowly,” promises Caleb, hoarse.

She aches for him, aches to feel him, aches to release the tension coiling inside her – “Go on,” says Jester, breathless, and rakes her fingers down his chest.

Caleb hisses slightly, hips twitching downwards. But it’s his two fingers that ease into her first, gentle, testing, and Jester sucks in a breath as they press up against inside her. “Just relax, Liebchen,” murmurs Caleb, trembling with the effort of holding himself up on one arm, and slides his fingers back and forth, each one testing just a little bit more. Jester moans high and faint in the back of her throat, overwhelmed, and it’s so _strange_ but it feels _right_ and it pinches a little but she wants _more _–

Kissing her again, Caleb swallows Jester’s moans as he works his fingers deeper in, stretching, pressing, and then he brushes a spot that sends sparks flying over her skin and Jester cries out, clutching at him. “Ahh,” says Caleb, shaky, and the pads of his fingers press into her again. Jester keens, hips arching, and throws one leg over his hip, pulling him in closer. Breathing heavy, Caleb draws his fingers out, making Jester shiver, and pushes her thigh to the side. She takes a deep breath like stepping off the diving board and then Caleb slides into her, his _cock_, and it’s full and strange and intimate and Jester rocks her hips experimentally and loses all the air in her lungs.

One hand bracing her hip, Caleb starts to roll into her, slow and steady like waves on the shore and his lips touch Jester’s and his chest touches Jester’s and his hips touch Jester’s and he’s everywhere, on top and inside and she clutches him close, each press of him inside her driving her closer and closer, and she presses her face into his shoulder to muffle a cry –

Except she doesn’t have to keep quiet.

“_Ahh,_” moans Jester, the sounds bursting out of her without conscious thought, “ah, _ah,_ _Caleb –_”

He groans like she’s never heard him before, throaty and desperate and unrestrained, and his one hand tangles in her hair as his body rocks into hers and it’s too much, _it’s too much,_ it keeps building and building and it’s too much, Jester can barely breathe, rocketing towards the water –

Dropping his head to kiss roughly at Jester’s neck, Caleb lets go of her hip, her leg anchored firmly around his waist, and reaches up to grab at her breast, massaging, and twists at her nipple.

Jester cries out, and all she can feel is Caleb’s touch and heat and all she can hear is his ragged breathing and orgasm crashes over her like waves cresting through her whole body, like plunging into deep water, like the blue overwhelms her, claims her, envelops her in a limitless space…

Panting, Jester slowly opens her eyes, aware of Caleb draped sweaty on top of her, his face buried in her shoulder. She mouths a kiss at his temple, at his damp hair, and curls one leg up hazily. He’s still inside her, wet heat pooling between her legs. “You came,” she says faintly.

Caleb raises his head, an exhausted smile hovering on his lips. “Yes, I did…”

Brushing a stray lock of hair off his forehead, Jester explains wistfully, “I wanted to watch.”

“You didn’t?” Caleb cocks his head, a slight frown wrinkling his eyebrows.

“I was a little… overwhelmed.”

Dropping his head, Caleb laughs, giddy and hoarse, and Jester loves him so suddenly and powerfully she could almost come again. “You are a treasure,” he says, cradling her face, and kisses her, soft and sweet. “We should… we should clean up, you stay here, I’ll get a towel.”

After they’ve wiped each other off and gotten a new blanket for the bed and collected their scattered clothing and drank water and Caleb checked on Frumpkin, Jester slides under the sheets with Caleb, both wearing just their underwear, and she curls up in his arms and nestles her head on his shoulder and his bare skin touches hers and she has never felt so utterly content and at peace, drifting towards sleep on cotton-candy clouds. “Good night, Caleb,” she murmurs.

His lips touch her hair, gentle as a moth. “Good night, Liebchen_._”

I should ask him what that means, she thinks, but I’m too tired to talk, and then sleep claims her.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit sexual content.

Jester comes to consciousness in warmth, nestled in bedsheets and curled around Caleb’s back, her arms wrapped around his waist. He still smells faintly of sweat, his breathing slow and even in sleep. Sighing comfortably, Jester cuddles closer to him, leaning her cheek on the back of his shoulder. Morning light filters in through the window blinds, tinted blue by his curtains, and all sounds from outside are muffled.

Jester drifts comfortably in and out of sleep for a while, until she hears something jump onto the bed, fabric shifting and a small weight moving towards her. Looking over her shoulder, Jester sees Frumpkin walking up, green-gold eyes round. “Hi,” chirps Jester.

Considering, Frumpkin jumps up onto Caleb’s hip and settles down into a perfectly-balanced loaf, tucking his paws underneath himself. He slowly blinks at Jester a couple of times, which she likes to think is his way of saying hello back. After a few moments, a low rumbling like a miniature diesel engine emanates from Frumpkin, and his eyes close.

Snuggling closer to Caleb, Jester sighs, feeling lazy and relaxed. In all the books she read, when the heroine lost her virginity it was a big deal and she came out a changed woman, but Jester doesn’t feel all that different. A little pleasantly sore, maybe.

Eventually her bladder demands she get up. Propping herself up on one elbow, Jester peers over at the sleeping Caleb. He looks younger in his sleep, the tired lines of his face softened, his tousled hair spread over the pillow, one hand curled under his cheek, the ragged scars on his arms less visible in the dim light. A faint snore drifts out of him, and Jester smiles and kisses his cheek before turning and slipping out of bed. She checks her phone idly and oops, _that’s _a text from Beau last night that she forgot to answer.

_Look I know youre probably fine but can you let me know where you are or something before I start researching russian kidnapping rings or something_

_I’m fine!! I’m at Caleb’s place _😉😉😉, Jester texts back. Considering it’s before noon on a Saturday, she doesn’t expect an answer anytime soon. It’ll probably just be the vomit emoji anyway.

Grabbing Caleb’s ratty blue sweater from the chair, Jester puts it on and pads around the apartment, looking for the bathroom. It ends up being behind a door in a corner, and it’s a simple room, unadorned. Jester peeks curiously in all the drawers, inspects Caleb’s bodywash and two-in-one shampoo/conditioner, pokes at his off-brand toothpaste. The lack of anything beyond practicalities makes her a little sad, and she fingers the thin weave of a gray towel ruefully. She could buy him some fancy soap, maybe, and the thought of putting together a little basket with soaps and lotions and hand towels for Caleb makes her smile.

After a few seconds of fiddling, she gets the shower working and lets the water run until it’s warm while she pees. Stripping off Caleb’s sweater and her underwear, she steps into the shower, sighing contentedly as hot water pours over her. Tilting her head back, she runs her fingers through her hair, eyes closed, steam gradually filling the room. Caleb’s shower curtain is red vinyl, and it turns the light around her rosy.

There’s a knock on the door, and Jester snaps her eyes open, hands cupped around the back of her neck, water trickling down her face. “May I come in?” asks Caleb, voice raised over the sound of running water.

A little thrill runs through Jester. “Sure.”

The door opens and closes, letting in a puff of cool air along with Caleb. “Steamy in here,” he remarks, his shadow moving on the other side of the vinyl shower curtain.

“Mmhm.” Jester combs through her wet hair with her fingers, curious about what Caleb will do next. Is he just in here to brush his teeth? Is he going to pee, with only the curtain in between her and him? Or will he –

Caleb pokes head in around the curtain, beads of damp immediately clinging to his hair. “Hello,” he says, smiling.

Blushing, Jester smiles back. “Good morning.”

“May I join?”

Jester’s smile deepens, her blush spreading over her body. “Of course.”

Naked, Caleb steps into the shower with her, his hair darkening as gets wetter, and his hands slide around Jester’s waist, warm and brushing over her skin. A pink flush touches his face, his chest, his cock, blooming across his skin like watercolor. She steps closer to him, the water running over both their heads, her breasts pressing into his chest, his half-hard erection nudging her thighs. “How did you sleep?” Caleb asks, water dripping from his nose.

“Very well,” says Jester. “You?”

A pleasantly bemused expression crosses Caleb’s face. “Good,” he says. “Better than I have in a long time.”

Tenderness blossoms in Jester’s chest, and she wants to wrap Caleb up in a blanket and let him sleep for a month. Standing on tiptoe, she kisses him softly, the hot water streaming down around them. Caleb cups her jaw in one hand and pulls her close against him, his lips moving with hers like melting wax. Desire builds in Jester like caramel, slow and hot and sweet. For long, long moments, she kisses Caleb, losing track of time in their little world of steam and pink light. And when Caleb does reach down between her legs, coaxing her gently towards orgasm, Jester wraps her arms around his chest and rests her head on his shoulder and comes undone. It’s not the most dramatic orgasm she’s ever had, but that’s not the point.

She returns the favor for Caleb, jerking him off under the stream of water as he braces himself with one hand on the tiled wall, panting gently as he kisses Jester. After he finishes, he folds her close to him, and Jester holds Caleb close and thinks, I could stay here forever.

But after only a few moments, Caleb disengages with a sigh. “We are wasting a lot of water,” he mutters regretfully, reaching around Jester to turn the shower off.

She shivers as the hot water disappears. “Fine...”

“You are not the one paying the water bill.” Caleb kisses the top of her head and pulls the shower curtain aside, reaching for a towel as he steps out.

I could, thinks Jester, arms wrapped around herself. But it occurs to her that maybe Caleb wouldn’t accept that offer.

They towel each other off and get dressed, and Caleb cooks them bacon and eggs which they eat at his little kitchen table, sunlight streaming through the window where a rosemary and a mint put forth hopeful sprouts of green. Jester sneaks Frumpkin tidbits of scrambled egg, the smell of Caleb’s coffee filling the air. Despite wanting to enjoy the peaceful moment, she can’t help remembering that they’ll have to go back to campus, like a clock ticking down to waking up from a beautiful dream. Caleb, silent, with a little frown wrinkling his forehead, looks like he’s thinking the same thing.

“We should do this again,” says Jester brightly, swinging her legs under the table. “Next weekend.”

Smiling, Caleb says, “Really?”

“Yeah.” Jester rubs her toes over his shin, taking a delicate bite of bacon. “Every weekend. Why not?”

With a quiet laugh, Caleb rubs at his forehead. “I am sure there is a good reason why not, but I am struggling to think of it at the moment.”

He’s right, there are probably lots of good reasons, but Jester is happy to pretend there aren’t for just a little longer. It gets harder and harder to, though, as they drive back to the university where Jester left her car. At before noon on a Saturday, campus is quiet, only a few handfuls of students drifting between buildings. “What are you going to do with the rest of your day?” asks Jester, as they pull into the main student parking lot.

Caleb sighs, circling to the aisle where Jester parked. “Well, I am already on campus, so I might as well get some work done…”

“Or some reading?”

Glancing over at her, Caleb says dryly, “You sneaked _Tusk Love_ into my satchel, didn’t you.”

Jester smirks at him, unrepentant.

“I will read a chapter for sure,” Caleb promises, and after glancing out the car windows guiltily, leans over to kiss Jester. She kisses him back, torn between wanting to make the most of this last moment and disappointment that they’ve returned to furtive glances and stolen kisses. “I will see you Monday, ja?”

“_Ja_,” says Jester, and at least that makes him laugh, so when she gets out of the car and leaves him behind she has his smiling face in her memory.

\--

It’s easy, almost too easy, for Caleb to slip back into the everyday routine of teaching over the next week. And when Jester manages to come by late one evening for office sex, it’s so like every other time, including needing to keep quiet, that disappointment stings Caleb a little.

Maybe Jester senses this, because after they’re done she sits on Caleb’s lap and smooths his hair out of his face with both hands. “We can get together again tomorrow,” she says. “I’m not doing anything. Or Saturday. Or Sunday –”

“Friday will be difficult, but Saturday I can manage.” A small happy bubble swells inside Caleb. “I’ll let you know?”

The answering smile that spreads across Jester’s face is all he could ask for. “Okay,” she says, and kisses him.

Later, as Caleb gets his papers together to go home, he realizes he left a notebook behind in one of the labs. “Damn,” mutters Caleb, rifling through his satchel in the vain hope that it will somehow turn up, but he knows exactly where it is, and it’s on a desk on the other side of the building. Sighing, Caleb hoists his bag over his shoulder and closes up his office before trudging down the hallway and making his way to the lab.

Sure enough, there’s his notebook, and Caleb grabs it and turns to go. But as he does so, he sees a light on in a classroom across the hallway. Curious, Caleb steps over and peers through the glass window in the door, trying to see who’s working as late as he is.

It’s Astrid, staring at what looks like a scattered collection of petri dishes, with hunched shoulders and a haggard expression on her face.

Despite himself, a thread of worry gnaws at Caleb, and he knocks quietly on the door. Astrid’s head snaps up, her eyes meeting his through the window, and then her shoulders slump with a silent sigh. Cracking the door open, Caleb sticks his head in and says, “May I come in?”

“Yeah,” rasps Astrid.

Caleb weaves through the tables in the room to stand across from Astrid, the little round petri dishes between them filled with what looks like a clear gel and a lot of condensation under the lid. “The experiment is not going well, I take it,” he says.

Astrid looks up at him with deep weariness and exasperation. “No,” she says, acid. “It’s not.” The pinky finger on her left hand shakes with a barely-perceptible tremor, and there are circles carved under her eyes.

For a long moment, Caleb wrestles internally with what to do, and then sighs quietly as he comes to a decision. “Put those away,” he says quietly, gesturing at the petri dishes. “Come on, you need a break and something hot to eat.”

Eyes narrowed, Astrid says, “Don’t parent me, Widogast –”

“I’m not.” Caleb puts as much sincerity in his voice as he can muster. “I am just saying this as a – as a former friend.”

Her skeptical gaze bores into him, and maybe it’s a trick of the light but Caleb catches a hint of iridescent green in her brown eyes. “All right,” she says at last, guarded. “As long as it’s quick.”

Strangely relieved, Caleb says, “Of course.”

The main dining hall on campus is closed, but a couple of the student recreation centers have smaller kitchens still open, and Caleb walks Astrid to the closer one. She orders the first thing on the menu, ravioli, and Caleb gets himself a decaf coffee, both for the taste and so he has something to do with his hands. The fluorescent ceiling lights of the dining area shine on the polished black chairs and the green-marble-esque laminate tops of the round tables, and only a handful of students sit scattered around, studying or talking quietly.

Picking a table tucked into a corner of the food court, Caleb and Astrid sit across from each other. She immediately starts devouring her ravioli with the ferocity of a starving wolf, while Caleb slowly sips his hot coffee.

With only two squares of filled pasta left, Astrid slows her pace, dragging her fork through the pesto sauce. An awkward silence hangs between them like a lead balloon. “So,” says Caleb, fiddling with the paper wrapper around his cup, casting around for a small talk topic. “Essek’s been out a few days, huh? Wonder what he is up to?”

Astrid raises a sharp eyebrow. “He’s out for that trial, he’s been going down to the county courthouse.”

“Ah,” says Caleb, feeling stupid. “The issue with his landlord, he mentioned.”

Ravioli halfway to her mouth, Astrid pauses. “No,” she says slowly. “It’s the Tealeaf murder trial. Didn’t you know?”

So Essek lied to me about that envelope, thinks Caleb with a sinking feeling, although he’s somehow not surprised. “I asked but Essek told me otherwise,” he says dryly. “Why is he implicated, though? Tealeaf was a theater student, he was never involved with him.”

“Apparently,” says Astrid, dragging the word out as she idly spins the pasta on her fork, “one of the main angles the defense is taking is that _really_, the toxic student culture fostered by University of Richmond is what led up to the circumstances of Tealeaf’s death, and Lorenzo was only an unfortunate actor in that chain. I guess Essek has some information on that.”

The sinking feeling in Caleb’s gut intensifies. “Is he saying anything about Dean Ikithon?”

Extremely and deliberately carelessly, Astrid shrugs.

Sighing, Caleb leans back in his seat. “Schieße,” he mutters.

“Seriously, though,” says Astrid, finally popping the ravioli in her mouth before chewing and swallowing. “I know you’ve always got your nose in a book, but how did you not know about this?”

“I’ve been preoccupied,” says Caleb distantly. “With my courses for the semester.”

“Ah,” says Astrid, eyebrows raised significantly, and she spirals her fork tines through the sauce on her plate. “Is that what you’re calling her, then?”

Caustic fear spikes through Caleb, pinning him in place. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he manages, robotic.

Astrid snorts. “Don’t lie, Caleb, it’s not going to do you any good. I saw you driving off campus with her last week. Man, I thought dating a fellow professor was ballsy, but a student? You’ve got bigger cajones than I thought.” Spearing her final ravioli on her fork, she brings it to her mouth and chews slowly, eyes fixed on him.

Controlling himself, Caleb takes a long, slow breath in through his nose, and then exhales just as slowly. “_How_?” he demands, voice constricted. “There was no one around except –”

“Except the aforementioned Essek Thelyss, I know. I saw that whole thing happen from the window of the admin building.”

“If you tell,” hisses Caleb, leaning towards her, acutely conscious of the handful of students still sitting around the dining area, “a single person, _if you tell Ikithon –_”

Affronted, Astrid tilts her chin up and says, “If I was going to tell someone, I would have already. But I didn’t, all right? And I won’t, so relax. Despite what you think of me, I’m not that kind of bitch.”

I don’t think that, Caleb instinctively wants to protest, but he knows now that it’s a lie. “Why not?”

Astrid shrugs. “What’s the point?”

“I assumed you would take delight in watching my destruction.”

“Yeah, but only if you do it to yourself.” A hint of a smile curls her lips, and now that she’s eaten she seems a little less wan, the tremor in her hand gone. “It’s not as fun otherwise.”

Despite himself, Caleb huffs a laugh. “Well, when it inevitably happens I will make sure you have front row seats.”

“Good.” Sighing, Astrid collects her used plastic plate and utensils, getting to her feet. “Thanks for dragging me out of the lab, Caleb.”

He brings his forgotten coffee back to his lips; it’s still decently hot. “And now you are going back, I presume.”

“The work never ends.”

“Astrid...” Caleb turns around in his seat to frown at her. “This research that you’re doing, is it all for Ikithon?”

She pauses, leveling a long, flat look at him. “What would you do if I said yes?”

Caleb regards her sadly.

“Yeah,” sighs Astrid. “That’s what I thought.” Heels clacking on the tiled floor, she crosses to the nearest trash can and drops her plate and fork in. “Night, Cay.”

“Good night,” murmurs Caleb, staring down at his coffee. He stays there for a while, thoughts churning over themselves uneasily. That Essek lied to him about the trial is concerning, the reason he’s being asked to testify even more so. And while he believes Astrid will keep his secret for now, he’s not sure how long that will last, so he should really warn Jester, and –

With an unpleasant jolt, Caleb realizes he never told Jester his history with Astrid.

Well, _that’s _a conversation he’s going to have to have, and Caleb doesn’t look forward to it at all. Sighing heavily, Caleb drains the dregs of his coffee and slowly gets to his feet, trudging out of the rec hall. He’s seeing her Saturday, so... best to get it over with as soon as possible, then.

As Caleb walks across campus towards his car, a gentle spring rain begins to fall.

\--

The rain that started last night still spatters fitfully against the windows of the art classroom as Jester considers her canvas with a sigh, tilting her head to better assess the rough collection of charcoal circles and lines on it. This late in the afternoon, the sky outside is the color of slate, but it makes a comforting contrast with the yellow lighting inside. She’s the only one left in the classroom as well, everyone else gone home, but there’s _something_ about this rough sketch that’s bothering her and Jester doesn’t want to leave until she figures out what it is.

The classroom door opens and Beau pokes her head in. “Hey,” she says, entering, bag slung over one shoulder and hands shoved in the pockets of her dark blue harem pants. “Figured you’d be in here.” Stepping over beside Jester, she cocks her head at the canvas curiously. “That for your final project?”

“Yeah.” Maybe it’s the way the figure’s back is angled, Jester thinks. Just not rounded enough. Grabbing her kneaded rubber eraser, she scrubs out the lines and sketches in a new curve, pursing her lips skeptically. Better, but still not quite right. Beau watching over her shoulder doesn’t bother her; if anything, it’s kind of reassuring.

Arms folded over her chest, Beau tilts her head, eyes half-closed speculatively. “Does she have horns?”

Jester frowns at the outline of the woman she sketched. “Horns?”

“Yeah.” Leaning over Jester, Beau traces a spiral around the side of the woman’s head like a small ram’s horn. “There.”

“_Nooo,_ that’s just like – that’s just the marks from sketching,” says Jester. But now that she looks at it, it _does_ look like a horn, and there’s kind of a swoop between her legs that might be a tail too. Maybe Jester will keep it, actually. She taps her pencil over her pursed lips, thinking, and adds in a little definition to see if she likes the concept. It has a certain quirky appeal…

Meanwhile, Beau has picked up Jester’s sketchbook and is flipping through it. Abruptly, the sound of paper turning stops. “Is this Molly?” says Beau.

Jester glances up to see Beau displaying the sketch she did a while ago, of Molly with his eyes closed surrounded by a tangle of thorns, the page slightly creased. “Yeah,” she says softly. “How did you know?”

Shrugging, Beau says, “Looks like him.” She pauses, then asks, “Is this another idea for one of your final paintings?”

“Maybe,” sighs Jester. “I don’t know.”

“I think you should.” Beau hands the sketchbook back to Jester, who takes it, carefully closing it over Molly’s face. “It’d be good.”

Holding the sketchbook close to her chest, Jester bites her lip, considering. “But if I do it for my final, then my professor is going to _judge_ it and I’m going to have to write about what the painting means and why I chose that subject...”

Beau shrugs, eyes hooded. “Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, though.” A wistful smile lifts the corners of her mouth. “I think he’d like it. Molly. If he knew.” 

Letting out a deep, shuddery breath, Jester hugs the sketchbook tighter. “Maybe,” she says, and manages a watery smile. “I’ll think about it.”

\--

With a flourish, Jester places a glossy brown bag on Caleb’s kitchen table and beams up at him, her hair tied back with a pink ribbon. “It’s a gift,” she says.

“A gift,” repeats Caleb, picking it up, and now he sees it is very clearly a bag of coffee beans, and from quite an expensive brand too. “For me?”

“No, for Frumpkin, silly. Yes, you!” Jester loops her hands through his arm and rests her chin on his shoulder, smiling up at him. “Open it.”

Caleb cocks an eyebrow at her, amused by her enthusiasm, and although normally he would keep this bag closed for a long time, to open only on a special occasion, he carefully pulls it open just enough to take a deep inhale of the coffee within. It smells fantastic, dark and rich and almost chocolatey, but with a woodiness that reminds him of fine wine, and Caleb sighs happily and practically sticks his nose in the bag to smell it again.

Aware of Jester watching him expectantly, Caleb surfaces and pulls her close with an arm around her waist, kissing her on the forehead. “Thank you,” he says, and kisses her on the lips. The last time he got a gift from anyone was... a long time ago, actually, and Caleb tucks her head under his chin, quietly touched.

“You like it?” says Jester.

“Yes, of course –”

Wriggling out of his arms, Jester says, “Good, because I bought more.” Reaching down to the pink backpack she brought with her, she pulls out another bag of premium coffee grounds and puts it on the table, and another, and another, and another...

Eventually eight different bags of coffee, all the same brand but in different flavors and roasts, stand next to each other on Caleb’s table as he stares in disbelief. “I didn’t know which kind you would like so I just got all of them,” explains Jester, adjusting the bag nearest to her. “Because I saw you have that instant coffee at home and I know it’s not always so good so I thought maybe you would like having more fancier coffee.” Though her voice lilts slightly with a question at the end, her smile is soft and steady, like a candle glow.

“I...” Caleb has to clear his throat a couple times before he can speak. “That is... extremely thoughtful of you. Thank you.”

Jester beams, stepping back in to pull him down and kiss him. Cupping her cheek, Caleb kisses her back, but he needs to tell her about Astrid, and the small coil of dread in his stomach keeps him from leaning into the moment too far. “Jester,” he says, pulling back. “I need to tell you something.”

She frowns, head tilting. “What?”

Sighing, Caleb sits down on the table, adjusting his sleeve cuffs so they cover his wrists out of habit. Start with the present and work backwards, he thinks. “Someone knows our secret.”

Eyebrows raised, Jester says slowly, “Who?”

“A, um, a professor in the Chemistry department. Dr. Astrid Sauer. She saw us last week, when you got into my car. She and I were...” Caleb takes a deep breath and says, “We were together, last year. Dating. We broke up right before the fall semester ended.” He stares down at the worn brown leather of his shoes and the scuffs on the concrete floor.

Eventually, when there’s no response from Jester, he has to look up and face her. Her blue eyes are fixed on him warily, her arms folded across her chest, her weight shifted onto one hip. “So, what, she’s jealous now?” she asks.

“Jealous? No, no, things ended very badly between us, I don’t think she ever wants to... no.” Caleb rubs his jaw ruefully. “If anything, she would want to get back at me.”

Eyebrows drawn together, Jester chews her lip. “I know, I should have told you about her sooner, I’m sorry,” says Caleb helplessly. “But these are not two parts of my life I wanted to bring together –”

“If she tries anything I’ll get her fired,” bursts out Jester, eyes snapping with blue fire. “It’s my fault she found out, I won’t let her hurt you, Caleb, I won’t –”

“Whoa whoa whoa, Jester, hang on –” Caleb reaches for her and finds her actually shaking in anger as he takes her elbows, pulling her closer towards him. “She won’t, all right? You don’t have to –”

“You just said she wants to _get back at you,_” demands Jester furiously.

“Yes, I know, but – it’s complicated, all right?” Caleb looks pleadingly up at Jester; as much as he knows she could hold her own against Astrid, that’s not a fight he ever wants to happen. “Trust me. I will handle it.”

Her expression shifts, eyes narrowing. “You don’t still _like_ her, do you?”

Aware of the ice thinning under his feet, Caleb pauses, choosing his words very carefully. “There is absolutely nothing left of what was once between us,” he says, deliberate and distinct. “We – I – torched that ground _very_ thoroughly. But I do still feel...” He pauses, searching for the right word. Friendship? Care? Concern? “A certain amount of guilt,” he says at last, and Jester frowns, worried. “And also, Astrid was my friend before she was my lover, and she deals with some of the same challenges at the university that I do, and I do feel a certain amount of responsibility for her well-being still. But you have nothing to worry about from her, I _swear._”

Though still frowning, Jester lets Caleb ease her closer into his arms, stepping between his legs. “I’m not _jealous_,” she says. “Well, okay, maybe a little,” and she wrinkles her nose. “But it’s... I don’t know. I don’t _like_ it, Caleb, and I don’t like her.”

“I know.” Caleb reaches for her hands, to gently unfold her arms, and Jester sighs and lets him. Massaging tension out of her knuckles and fingers, Caleb says, “This is my problem to handle, Jester. I just thought you should be aware.”

Jester sighs again, the hem of her pink-and-ivory flowered dress brushing Caleb’s knees. “I can help,” she says, her thumbs rubbing over the backs of his fingers. “You don’t have to do it alone.”

Heart swelling, Caleb cups Jester’s face in his hand, his fingers sliding behind her head. “Jester, I…” The word _love_ blooms on his tongue, but he hangs onto it, not quite ready to release it. “You are very important to me,” he says, brushing his thumb over her cheek. “And I will not let anything get in the way of that.”

Jester’s lips part, and she holds Caleb’s hand to her face, her gaze deep and unfathomable. Caleb’s breath catches in his chest, and for a brief moment his stomach tilts with vertigo. Leaning in, Jester kisses him with lips like rose petals, her hand on his thigh. Desire smolders gently in Caleb, and although he knows the answer already, he murmurs to Jester, “Stay the night with me.”

Her breath trembling on his lips, Jester touches her forehead to Caleb’s. “Always.”

\--

The bright morning sunlight streams through Caleb’s blinds, spilling over the rumpled sheets around Jester and Caleb and picking out copper highlights in Caleb’s hair, turning his blue eyes to crystal. Lying naked on her stomach, Jester props herself up on her elbows and plays with a curl of Caleb’s hair, running it through her fingers.

Smiling, Caleb turns his head to look at her, Jester trailing her finger over the arch of his nose. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Yes.” Jester continues her fingers’ journey over Caleb’s lips – he gives her a little kiss – over his chin, down his neck, and along his bare collarbone and chest. When she starts to dip her hand under the sheets, Caleb grabs her hand and brings it back up to his lips, kissing each knuckle. “Are you?”

For an answer, Caleb kisses the pad of her thumb.

Satisfied, Jester swings her heels idly over her back, and then when Caleb’s eyes half-close as he starts to doze off again, sticks her finger in his ear.

Caleb starts, swatting away her hand, and a laugh bubbles out of Jester as she rolls out of his reach. “You –” says Caleb, reaching for her. “Come here –”

Giggling madly, feet kicking, Jester puts up a token resistance as Caleb grabs her around the waist and pulls her in. But she ends up exactly where she wants to be, sprawled on top of his chest, his hands on her ribs and his handsome, laughing face looking up into hers. His skin is so warm, and the little red and blond hairs in his beard glint like sparks, and Jester wants to kiss every inch of his face until she can’t anymore. “You make me happy,” she says.

The grin on Caleb’s face gentles, and he reaches up to smooth out a tangle of Jester’s hair. “Du erleuchtest mein Leben,” he says.

“What does that mean?”

His fingers trace over the shell of her ear, his eyes intent on her face. “You light up my life.”

A happy shiver runs down Jester’s spine, and she turns her head to kiss Caleb’s palm – and then tickles him in the ribs. “Jester!” yelps Caleb, rolling over on top of her with Jester on her back, and she bites her lip mischievously and wiggles underneath him. His thighs press into hers, and she can feel the nudge of his cock. “What am I going to do with you?”

Eyebrows waggling suggestively, Jester makes a circle with one hand and pokes her other index finger through it.

Caleb sighs, mock-exasperated, but she can see the gleam of desire in his eyes. “If you insist,” he says, and kisses her. “Any other clever ideas?”

“I’ll let you know,” says Jester coyly, and as Caleb pulls her under the sheets, her joyful giggles fill the entire apartment.

Afterwards, as she’s toweling dry her hair, shower steam on the bathroom mirror slowly fading, she says, “You should write to your parents.”

Caleb looks up sharply at her, the coffee machine burbling noisily away behind him. “No.”

“You don’t know that they don’t want to talk to you, and even if they didn’t, after all these years –”

“I said, _no,_” and his scowl stings more than Jester thought it would. “I have accepted the consequences of my actions, all right? Leave it be.”

Oh, that’s what it is, Jester thinks sadly. “Caleb, you don’t have to keep punishing yourself,” she says softly.

His wide eyes meet hers, his mouth open slightly as if startled. “I…” says Caleb, and then the coffee maker dings, and he hurriedly turns around to grab a mug and fill it. When he faces Jester again, his face is carefully blank. “It’s all right,” says Caleb, blowing on his hot coffee. “Don’t worry about it.”

But Jester _is_ going to worry about it. Stepping over to join him at the kitchen counter, she pours coffee for herself and adds a liberal amount of cream and sugar. “I don’t really know who my dad is, you know,” she says quietly, and takes an experimental sip. “He was really in love with my mom, and they had me, but then he left. Mom’s showed me his pictures, but I’ve never met him. And I can’t find him on social media.” She glances up at Caleb, who watches her with a brow wrinkled sympathetically. “And I wish I could, _so much._ If I had the chance to send him a letter…” 

Caleb sighs into his coffee. “It is not so simple for me,” he says. “But I see your point.”

“Maybe it _is_ that simple, and you just don’t want it to be.” Cupping her hands around the warmth of the coffee mug, Jester leans against the counter and eyes Caleb over the rim of the mug as she takes another sip. “Maybe you’re scared of what will happen if they _do_ want to talk to you, and you were wrong all these years.”

“You are starting to sound like my therapist,” mutters Caleb.

“Well, I bet she’s pretty smart –”

“He,” corrects Caleb automatically.

“– and would totally agree with everything I am saying to you right now.”

Eyebrows raised, Caleb says, “I don’t know about _that._”

For an answer, Jester slurps her coffee expectantly.

“No,” groans Caleb, dragging a hand over his face. “Jester, I’m not – I’m not facing that, not now –”

“You don’t have to,” she says innocently, and a brilliant idea comes to her. “Just write down their address on an envelope. That’s all you have to do. Then when you _are_ ready, it’ll be right there for you to send a letter to them.”

“It has been over fifteen years since I left, I highly doubt they are at the same address,” grumbles Caleb. But he goes to his desk, rooting around in it until he finds an envelope and a pen. Jester follows to peer over his shoulder as he writes out an address. “Frederick and Anna Er-men-drud,” she sounds out. “Why is that their last name?”

Arms braced against the desk, Caleb sighs. “I was born Bren Ermendrud,” he says. “One of the people who sponsored me after I came to the states was named Widogast, and I took that name when applying for residency.”

Jester stares at him, trying to match “Bren” to the familiar planes and shapes of his face. “So Caleb’s not your real name, then,” she says slowly.

“It’s the name on all my legal documents,” says Caleb, shrugging. “It may not be the name I was born with, but it is the name I have now.”

“Do you _want_ me to call you Bren…?”

“No, no,” he says decisively, and Jester can’t help but be a little relieved. “I have been Caleb for a long while, now. Bren is… Bren is someone else.”

That’s fine by Jester, who thinks Caleb Widogast is a much nicer name than Bren Ermendrud anyway. But before she leaves that day, while Caleb’s in the bathroom, she takes a quick picture of the address he wrote out so she has it on her phone – for future reference.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit sexual content.

When Caleb stops by the faculty lounge in the morning before class, there’s Essek, sprawled elegantly on one of the worn faux-leather couches as he chats with Dr. Hass. Caleb lingers around his mail cubby and then the coffee machine for a little while, waiting for Hass to leave, but after several minutes it doesn’t seem like he will, and Caleb only has so much time to spare before class. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he says, approaching, and both turn to look over at him.

“Good morning,” says Essek pleasantly.

Hass smiles and raises his coffee cup to salute Caleb’s, his broad brown face creasing in a smile. “How is your cat?”

“Very well,” says Caleb. “My apologies, do you mind if I borrow Dr. Thelyss for a minute?

Gesturing to go ahead, Hass steps back and takes a drink from his mug as Essek unfolds himself from the couch, a wary glint to his eyes that makes Caleb think he knows exactly what this conversation is going to be. “Of course,” says Essek, and follows Caleb out into the hallway, the door closing after them.

Caleb does not waste time with preamble. “You lied,” he says. “About the subpoena.”

Sighing, Essek rubs at the back of his head. “Yes. I did.”

The unspoken “why” hangs in the air as Caleb folds his arms, leaning against the wall. Essek is tall enough that Caleb has to tilt his head up slightly to look him in the eye. Looking unhappy, Essek sighs again and says, “You are not going to like the answer.”

“I still want to hear it.”

Essek rubs at his broad lips with one long finger, frowning at Caleb. “It was a precaution,” he says slowly. “Some of my testimony pertained directly to Dean Ikithon, and since you are in his camp, well... Not that I think you would try to defend him,” he adds hastily as Caleb draws himself up, a flame lighting at the back of his spine, “just that I wanted to be completely sure there would be no – ah – interference until after I had said my piece.”

“I am in no one’s _camp_,” hisses Caleb, leaning into Essek’s space. “Especially not his.”

Coolly unbothered, Essek shrugs and says, “He is the head of your department, after all.”

“It’s your department, too.”

“Not for long after this, I imagine.” Essek doesn’t sound particularly disappointed about that; if anything, there’s a roguish curl to his lips and gleam to his eyes. “That’s all right. I already have options lined up elsewhere. Leaves a nice empty spot for you to fill though, huh? Perhaps you might even finally get tenure.”

Caleb can’t tell if it’s a jab or genuine, but losing Essek means losing one of his few allies, even if he is a dubious one. “I will be sorry to see you go,” he says quietly. “Though I am glad you have an escape route in place.”

“See, the fact that you call it an escape route is _very_ telling,” remarks Essek dryly. “I have to get going, I have class, but maybe spend some time and think about what you’re doing here and what you _really_ want out of it all.” And he claps Caleb on the shoulder and breezes past him, leaving Caleb blinking in place, slightly stunned.

Recovering, Caleb turns around to call after Essek’s retreating back, though as he opens his mouth he doesn’t know what to say. Frustrated, he stares after him a moment longer, and then turns back to head down the hallway to his own first class of the day.

\--

The sound of the apartment door opening and closing rouses Jester from her third watch-through of _The Great British Bake Off_, and she looks up from where she sprawls on her stomach on her bed. “Hi, Beau.”

“Hey.” Dropping her bag to the floor, Beau drags herself into Jester’s room and collapses onto the chair in front of Jester’s vanity with a heavy sigh.

Pausing the episode (one of Jester’s favorites, someone gets so mad they drop their entire dessert in the trash can), Jester props her chin on her hand and waits. Arms dangling at her sides, Beau leans her head back on the chair and stares blankly up at the ceiling. Another long, slow exhale ekes out of her. “Everything okay?” asks Jester carefully.

“I said yes to Stanford,” monotones Beau.

“Oh!” squeaks Jester, sitting up straight. “Yay!”

“How am I going to _pay_ for it?” Groaning, Beau drags her hands down her face and slumps over, elbows on her knees. “What the fuuuuuck…”

Jester bites her tongue, drawing her knees up to her chest, wanting desperately to offer Mom’s help but certain Beau will object. “I’ll figure it out,” says Beau, straightening and pushing her hair out of her face. “I’ll apply for a bunch of scholarships, I’ll – fuck, if I have to take out loans I will, lawyers make bank anyway, I can pay it back –”

Unable to hold it in any longer, Jester says, “My mom –”

“_No._”

“Why not?” Jester can understand Beau’s pride, but with this much money at stake, her stubborn refusal to accept help seems silly. “Even just a little bit –”

“I _can’t_,” says Beau, glaring at her. “I’ve been given money my whole life, I’ve had help my whole life, I have to – I have to do this on my own, okay, I need to know I can do it without handouts –”

“There’s nothing wrong with getting help –”

“There is!” Jester’s never seen Beau this agitated before; she leans forward in her chair, eyes snapping, spots of color high on her cheeks, and her fingers twisting together so tight her knuckles pale. “I can’t rely on it anymore, because someday it’s not going to_ be _there, and –”

“_Beau,_” says Jester, sliding off the bed to kneel in front of Beau and putting her hands on her forearms, and Beau looks up at her with a drawn, desperate look. “I’ll always be around to help you. I promise.”

A hoarse laugh escapes Beau, the glimmer of tears rising to her eyes. “Jess, you don’t have to –”

“I know,” says Jester fiercely. “That’s not the point.” And she pulls Beau into a hug, grabbing her tight around the shoulders.

It’s awkward, with Jester up on her knees and Beau on the chair, and their heads bump together and shoulders knock against each other, and Jester doesn’t care at all. Beau hugs her back, fierce and angular, one hand clenched tight around the loose collar of Jester’s shirt. “I’m going back to California, too,” says Jester. “So I won’t really be _that_ far away…”

“Stanford to LA is pretty fuckin’ far.” Wiping her eyes, Beau pulls back, and pulls the ponytail holder out of her fine brown hair so it tumbles down around her face before gathering it back up into a knot, deft fingers wrapping the elastic around it. “You’re going back, though? What about – you know.” She grimaces. “Caleb.”

“Well…” Jester sits back on her heels, anxious and a little sad. “We don’t know. We’ll figure it out. I can always visit him.”

Beau cocks her head, eyeing her. “Long distance is a big commitment. It’s not easy.”

“I know,” says Jester miserably. “I could live here, I guess, but I don’t know anything about that yet.”

“You’ll figure it out.” Beau gives a friendly nudge to Jester’s knee with her toes. “Hey, has Fjord told you what he’s doing after graduation yet? ‘Cause I got no fucking clue.”

“No,” and Jester realizes with a guilty start that she’s been so absorbed with Caleb that she hasn’t paid much attention to Fjord lately. “He’s okay, right?”

Giving her an odd look, Beau says, “Yeah, why wouldn’t he be?”

It’s like déjà vu but not quite, this sudden sense of glimpsing through a mirror to another time, another place, where somehow Fjord is _not_ all right. “I don’t know,” says Jester distantly. “Just a feeling.”

“He’s probably holed up for finals, that’s why we haven’t been seeing as much of him,” and if Beau’s confidence is feigned, it sounds real enough to Jester. “Come on. You doing anything for dinner? I got, like, half a burrito in the fridge and that’s it…”

Shaking herself out of her reverie, Jester gets to her feet, smoothing her skirts out. “Okay, fine,” she says. “I’ll buy, but this time you’re driving.”

Beau snorts. “That’s fair.”

\--

University of Richmond has its own art museum, a postmodern construction tucked away on one corner of the campus so as not to offend the stately colonial architecture with its sharp angles and blank stuccoed walls. At this time of evening, the museum is empty as Caleb approaches, the stark lighting of the exhibits inside visible through the wide glass windows as he approaches. Unlocking the back door with his faculty card, he slips inside.

When Jester told him her final art pieces for the semester were on display in the museum along with other students, Caleb had expected her to insist on showing him, even to drag him over right that minute with her hallmark enthusiasm. But instead she seemed almost shy, both deeply wanting him to go, and not wanting to openly admit that longing. Now, as Caleb paces slowly around the darkened museum, the only illumination the spotlights shining on individual artworks, he plays a little game with himself, trying to see if he can pick out Jester’s handiwork without reading the placards.

There are certainly some very fine pieces of art on display, and some that Caleb doesn’t understand at all, whether painted or sculpted, although he has long since accepted that modern tastes have passed ahead and left him behind. Nothing really speaks to him of Jester, though, and he paces through the several room slowly, his hands in his pockets, until –

The painting occupies a center spot on the wall, framed by two highly experimental monstrosities, a bright white light shining down on it. Bold brushstrokes cover the canvas in rich jewel tones, forming the curving back, round rear, and half-tucked legs of a cobalt-skinned woman, her back to the viewer as she rests on a chair, her navy hair tousled gently over her shoulders, her arms on the chair back. A mirror faces her and the viewer, and the face in the mirror is a self-portrait of Jester, staring back out at Caleb with a wistful, haunting expression.

Caleb stops in his tracks, transfixed. The interplay between the broad, brightly-colored paint of the blue woman and the orange room she sits in, and the delicate, almost ethereal precision of her reflection, draws him in, and the more he looks the more he notices strange, dreamlike details. The blue woman – another aspect of Jester, perhaps? – has a slim tail that curves down alongside her legs, ending in an arrowhead. A charcoal-gray horn curls around the ear visible to the viewer, almost intermingling with her hair. The curve of her hand from where her wrist dangles from its rest top of the chair is too swanlike to be anatomically correct, and her back seems slightly too long, as if an extra vertebrae was inserted. Jester’s face in the mirror, at not quite the right angle to be the blue woman’s reflection, looks straight out at the viewer, her eyes like sapphire kaleidoscopes that draw Caleb in deeper and deeper and deeper, light and color dancing together so vividly they almost seem to dance on the canvas.

He’s so engrossed he doesn’t notice Jester until she’s standing right next to him, wearing a fitted t-shirt dress of black and white horizontal stripes, a silver-and-rhinestone barrette sparkling in her hair. “It turned out pretty good, didn’t it,” she says contentedly, admiring her work.

Caleb smiles down at her. “It is very good.” Her fingers slip securely into the spaces between his. “Is there a secret meaning behind it? You know, with all the,” and he gestures at the blue woman. “The blue. And the horns. And the tail…”

Jester shrugs. “I wrote a lot of things about loneliness and feeling different in my final essay, you know, because of how I grew up,” she says. “But really it just felt right. I don’t know. The idea just came to me.”

“It’s very good,” says Caleb earnestly, and squeezes her hand.

Smiling up at him, Jester says, “Come see the other ones I did,” and leads him by the hand through the darkened museum.

The next painting she takes him to is a portrait of a young man, and though it’s stylized the features are rendered enough that Caleb can identify Mollymauk Tealeaf. His brown tangle of hair becomes a mass of thorns and briars that surrounds his pale face like a halo, small red roses blooming here and there in the bramble. From underneath one closed eyelid, straight silver lines ray out, and underneath the other are three crimson teardrops. His hands are folded over his chest, holding onto another, larger red rose, and a brightly-colored cloth of many disparate patterns covers what’s visible of his upper body. His expression in repose is serene, reminding Caleb of a medieval tomb effigy. “Ah,” he says quietly.

“This is Molly,” says Jester softly. “He was my friend. He – I don’t know if you know what happened?”

Caleb rubs his thumb over her knuckles. “I have a general idea.”

“We were – we were at a party,” she says, voice wavering slightly. “Last year, right before break started. The musical he was in wrapped, so the cast and crew threw a big party, it was wild, people were getting hammered, there was drugs...” Something about that, _drugs_, sticks in Caleb’s brain, and he files it away for examination later. “These guys showed up, I don’t know who they were, I think maybe they knew some of the crew, and...” Jester takes a deep breath, her hand on Caleb’s tightening, her lower lip trembling. “One of them was this big guy named Lorenzo, and somehow he and Molly got in a fight, a really bad one, and... he stabbed Molly. Through the chest. With a flagpole. We called nine-one-one, but by the time he got to the hospital, Molly was already gone.” Her words falter at the end, her voice small.

“Jester, I...” Heart aching, Caleb pulls Jester close against his side, dropping his face to her hair. “I am so sorry, for you and your friend.”

Muffled into his chest, Jester says, “Thank you,” and sniffles. Kissing her hair, Caleb rubs at her back. She stays there for a moment, and then steps back, straightening and wiping her eyes to recover herself. “And then there’s this one.”

The third painting she shows Caleb is markedly different from any of the others. Fat pastel hamsters romp across the canvas, cotton-candy manes and tails rippling behind them and little gleaming unicorn horns on their heads, each leaving a rainbow arc in its wake. It’s so rampantly joyful and unabashedly unpretentious, in contrast to all the very self-conscious art around it, that Caleb can’t help but laugh. “What did your professor think of this one?”

“Oh, she _hated_ it, I’ll probably get an F on it,” says Jester cheerfully. “I don’t care, I had fun. … Also, I hid a dick in it.” 

Sure enough, one of the hamsters has a spot on its side shaped suspiciously like a phallus. Caleb chuckles. “I like it.”

“Thank you.” Eyes bright, Jester beams up at him, and then her smile turns soft and hesitant. “I did one more, if you’d like to see it...?”

“Of course I would,” says Caleb, intrigued.

“It’s not here, it’s at my apartment,” says Jester, and bites her lip in a little nervous gesture. “If you want to come.”

Caleb’s heartbeat stutters a moment at the unexpected vulnerability of her request. “Of course,” he says. “Will your roommate not be there?”

“No, she’s out for the night.” Jester wrinkles her nose, and Caleb wonders what Beauregard’s up to that Jester finds so distasteful. Probably he’s better off not knowing. “I can drive you, or...?”

They end up driving separately, Caleb following Jester, so that he’ll still have his car with him. Her apartment is reasonably close to campus, one of a row of very nice townhomes. In the warmth of the spring night, the scent of blooming magnolia trees hangs heavy in the air, a distant cicada singing in prelude to summer. He follows Jester up the stairs into her apartment, which is a beautiful space architecturally, with high ceilings, wide French windows, and polished wood floors, and also full of not just furniture and art and potted plants but the inevitable detritus of two college students living on their own for a year. He likes it, though. There’s something cozy about the many throw pillows and the clothes strewn everywhere, and a brightly-colored mural of branching vines and flowers stretches over the living room wall, clearly Jester’s handiwork.

Hand in his, Jester leads Caleb up the stairs to the second level, where the two bedrooms are. The door of one is shut, presumably belonging to Beauregard, but the other room that Jester brings him into is clearly hers. The four-postered bed with a canopy is piled high with white and teal bedding, another floral mural decorates the wall, and an elaborate light-rimmed mirror hangs above a vanity desk that glitters with jewelry and perfume bottles. “Close your eyes,” orders Jester, dropping his hand, and Caleb obeys.

There then follows a minute or so of the distinct sound of Jester rummaging through a closet and muttering to herself in frustration. “Here!” says Jester at last, breathless but triumphant. “Okay, you can open your eyes in three – two – one –”

Caleb opens his eyes and finds himself staring at his own face.

The canvas Jester holds is a little smaller than the three showcase pieces in the museum, but the vibrant brushwork is the same. Set against a gold-green background, the portrait of Caleb captures him in profile, looking down with an expression of quiet concentration. A startling grace imbues the brushstrokes, from the curve of his lower lip to the shadows under his jaw to the clean line of his nose, and gilt traces strands of his flame-colored hair and his long eyelashes. The painted light behind him seems to glow, haloing his head, and he looks... beautiful. “When did you do this?” asks Caleb hoarsely.

“Oh, I’ve been working on it here and there for a while, I did the sketch way back in class once, and I liked it so much I decided to paint it.” She runs a hand fondly along the side of the canvas. “I think it turned out pretty nice.” Glancing up searchingly at Caleb, she adds, “What do you think?”

Passing a shaky hand over his mouth, Caleb sits down on Jester’s bed, still staring at the painting. Something about the glow in the painting, or the delicacy of Jester’s brushstrokes, bestows an undeserved grace on his visage, and if _this_ is how Jester sees him, then he doesn’t know why but he will accept it unquestioned as a blessing. “I am at a loss for words,” he manages. “Thank you, I… I really don’t know what to say.”

Regarding him curiously, Jester tilts her head and sets the painting down carefully. Barefooted, she steps over to Caleb, reaching out to caress along his jaw, her smooth skin catching on his stubble. As her thumb brushes over his lips, Caleb sighs, a shiver running down his spine at the depth in Jester’s eyes. “You look upset,” she says quietly, steadily.

“No, no, not upset, just…” Pausing, Caleb searches for the right word, sifting through German and English syllables. “Overwhelmed.”

Mischief glints in Jester’s eyes, and she straddles his lap, sitting down on his lap. “Oh, do I overwhelm you?” she says archly, fingers curving around his jaw.

Caleb can do nothing but be honest. “Every day,” he says, and kisses her.

Kissing Jester is like submerging himself into deep water, losing himself in her touch, her taste, her smell. Sliding his hands around her waist, Caleb draws Jester in closer, her weight heavy on his thighs. His fingers pass over the small of her back and over the swell of her rear, squeezing gently, and Jester gasps quietly into his mouth and kisses him, her hands sliding down the front of his shirt. “Caleb,” she whispers, voice trembling, and her lips brush over his like velvet.

“Ja?”

She doesn’t say anything, but kisses him again with increasing need, her hips rolling into his. Cupping her face in his hand, Caleb draws her in for a deeper kiss, his lips parting so he can slide his tongue alongside hers. He’ll never get over how alive she feels in his arms, the energy that hums just underneath her skin as she rises up on her hips for a better angle to kiss him. Maybe Jester sees him with a glow, but to him she’s absolutely radiant.

Jester’s hands travel hungrily down his chest, ripping open his shirt buttons, and Caleb shivers as she yanks his shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. He still feels the panicky jolt as his scars are exposed, but it’s fine, he powers past it, leaning into Jester’s touch instead. She has a string of little lights wound around the canopy of her bed, and they reflect like stars in her eyes as she appraises Caleb, cheeks flushed, full lips parted. “Like what you see?” he asks.

Her lips curl in a grin. “Yeah.” She grasps his chin to pull him in for another kiss, her other hand sliding flat over his stomach, and Caleb’s breath catches when she reaches his lower abdomen.

Good, because it’s all yours, pops into Caleb’s head. Before he can be more than briefly surprised by the sudden promise, she pushes into him, kissing him enthusiastically enough to knock Caleb back onto his elbows, his bent legs hanging over the edge of the bed.

The weight of Jester on his chest grounds Caleb, sinking him into the bedding, her presence so solid and _real,_ every detail of her lips stark against his. Caleb pulls her dress up so he can grab her rear again, fingers sinking into the plush muscle of her glutes and rocking her hips against his. Mouth hot and heavy on his, Jester shudders and arches her back, swaying again, and the blood rushes to Caleb’s groin.

Tearing away, she presses her lips to his neck, cool against his overheated skin, and gasps as she rolls her hips back and forth over his growing bulge, faster, and Caleb closes his eyes and tangles one hand in her hair and Jester’s panting breaths grow faster and higher until she stops abruptly, lifting off of him. “Jester?”

“I don’t want to come just yet,” she whispers, and kisses his neck again.

Caleb shivers, saying, “Were you that close?”

For an answer, Jester takes his face in both her hand and kisses him sloppily, grinding into him again.

Wasting no time, Caleb pulls her dress up and off of her, her dark hair tangling into a cloud as the dress comes off her head. Maroon lace cups her breasts, stark against her skin, the delicate filigree carefully encasing two perfect curves. Reaching up, Caleb draws the pads of his fingers across her collarbone and down the valley between her breasts before slipping his thumb up underneath the bottom of one cup, pressing in gently and waiting. Jester catches her breath, pupils dilated, her hands on his chest. Caleb lets the moment hang in the air, building both Jester’s anticipation and his own, his breath tightening, desire curling in his stomach, and then – he slides his thumb up further, skewing her bra, and circles and rubs around her nipple.

Jester moans quietly, eyes closing, hips rolling slightly. Keeping a firm but gentle pressure, Caleb keeps rubbing, the pink nub tightening under his thumb, and although it’s tricky with the fabric restricting his hand it’s worth it in the way Jester bites her lip and flushes. When the press of the underwire onto his finger starts to become an annoyance, Caleb withdraws his hand, trailing his fingers down Jester’s abdomen and onto her thigh instead. “Will you take your bra off?” he asks.

The color on Jester’s cheeks deepen and she reaches behind her to unclasp her bra. “Slowly,” says Caleb, though he probably doesn’t need to specify, as Jester takes her time letting one strap fall off her shoulder and then the other, putting on a demure show as she lets the maroon lace drop away, her arms half-obscuring her breasts. Dropping her bra to the side, she glances coquettishly through her lashes at Caleb, her arms pushing her cleavage together. “There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world,” says Caleb, and he knows it’s part of the game, to play coy, but he wants to _see _her. “It would be a pity to conceal yours.”

Jester laughs, leaning back on her hands and tossing her hair, and Caleb takes the time to appreciate the marvel of her nearly-naked body. “You didn’t come up with that, I know that quote,” she says.

“It’s a very appropriate one,” he says, and because he can’t stand the distance between them any more, he sits back up and pulls her into a kiss that feels like breathing sparks into her, the air between them heating. His erection strains in his pants, and part of him wants immediate release but the other wants to draw things out, to push himself to the edge again and again until –

Her lips still on his, Jester reaches down and unbuckles his belt, deftly unzipping his pants and opening them. The heel of her palm slides over his bulge, separated only by the thin cotton of his underwear, and Caleb groans and nearly bucks into her hand. “Jester,” he pants, hoarse.

“Yes?”

This time it’s his turn to say nothing as he kisses her desperately instead, his hands roaming over her bare skin, down her back and across her sides and up to seize both breasts, gently kneading and tugging, and Jester moans quietly into his mouth and arches into his touch. When he tweaks her nipples between forefinger and thumb, a shiver ripples across her body. The damp heat between her legs presses against his bulge, so much and yet not enough. “Jester,” breathes Caleb again, and this time he knows what he wants. “Lie down. On your back, please. And take your panties off.”

“Only if you take your pants off first,” she murmurs, kissing him again.

Easily done, although there’s an awkward moment where Caleb has to fumble to untie his shoelaces, his fingers suddenly frustratingly clumsy while Jester watches from her seat on the bed, knees drawn up to her chest and a smirk on her face. But eventually he kicks them off and strips off his socks and sheds his pants and then, finally, he can lean back over a smiling Jester as she stretches out on the bed, all luscious curves and smooth skin as she pulls him in for another kiss. Caleb kisses her back for a moment and then travels his lips down her neck, lingering, over the fullness of her breast, and closes his mouth around her nipple. The keen that Jester makes stokes the embers in his belly, and when he applies his tongue, lightly flicking, Jester squeals and throws her head back and wraps a leg around his hip, yanking him closer.

Caleb could do this all night, listening to the noises she makes as he winds her up tighter and tighter, but there’s a reward at the end he’s keen to get to. Releasing, he kisses further down her body, down her stomach, down to the V of dark hair over her groin, and slides back enough that he comfortably push her thigh aside with one hand as he parts her slick folds with the other, pressing his tongue into the sharp-tasting heat of _her_, of Jester. His eyes closed, all he can smell is her, all he can taste is her, all he knows is the soft feel of her as he laps at her clit, and when he sucks gently, she keens again and arches her back so high her hips nearly lift off the bed, her heat and mass pressing into Caleb instead. Gripping Jester’s thigh to steady her, Caleb works at her until his chin is dripping and her pants and gasps approach the edge, high and breathless.

Short on breath himself, Caleb pulls back, watching Jester as she slowly sinks back into the bedding, too wound up to fully relax. His cock is uncomfortably hot and tight in his underwear, and he strips his boxers off without ceremony, the gray cotton joining the scattered clothes on the floor. Chest rising and falling sharply, Jester looks him over with a hungry gaze, her eyes glittering and cheeks red. “What do you want?” she asks, voice high and hoarse.

You, Caleb nearly says, but he knows that’s not the question. “I would like to fuck you, please.”

The hunger in Jester’s eyes darkens and deepens, and she parts her legs wider in invitation.

Caleb nearly comes just about there but he groans and holds it in, clinging desperately to hot embers for a little longer as he lines his hips up with hers, sliding in slow. It’s always this part that’s nearly unbearable, the delicious warmth and wet and tightness around where he’s stimulated most, and Caleb sucks in a ragged breath and leans down to pass his lips over Jester’s in a sloppy approximation of a kiss as she draws her knees up against his hips, rolling into him. Her groan mingles with his, their breath shared in the inch between their mouths, their bare skin pressed together in so many ways. “Jester,” pants Caleb again, and then, because English has deserted him, “Jester, Liebchen, ich liebe dich, ich will dich, ich brauche dich, Du bist so hübsch –”

She can’t understand him but maybe she knows what he means because she moans long and aching, and Caleb rocks into her, steady, gradually increasing his pace, and fire prickles over his entire body, threatening to burst, but he holds it tight, sweaty hair falling in his eyes, Jester trembling in his arms. She clutches him, gasping, and Caleb braces himself with one forearm under her shoulders as his other hand travels up to her breast again, groping and squeezing. As he kisses her neck, he grabs at her again, tweaking her nipple, and Jester shudders and tightens around him and comes with a high, breathless, drawn-out moan.

Her voice is like gasoline to the flames and Caleb cries out, falling to pieces completely, his hips jerking as orgasm bursts through him. For a long few moments, he lies still and spent, half-collapsed on top of her, and the sound of them catching their breath echoes in the bedroom.

Finally, Caleb pushes himself up on trembling arms, pressing a soft kiss to Jester’s lips. Gaze soft with the post-coital haze, she sighs contentedly and brushes damp hair off of his forehead, her own mussed and tangled. “What did you say?” she asks. “In German.”

Caleb’s ears grow hot. “I will tell you later,” he promises. “We should clean up –”

Frowning, Jester says, “Why not now?”

Because the last time he told someone _I love you_ it was Astrid and she threw his words back at him two weeks later. “Because,” he says, and to stave off her pout, “It was nice, I assure you.”

“Okaaaay…” and she acquiesces long enough for them to shower, stealing kisses in between the warm water. But when they return to bed, curled in each other’s arms, the inevitable “Is later now?” comes, and Caleb tucks his head in her shoulder and knows that once again, the only thing he can do is tell the truth.

“I said, ‘Darling, I love you, I want you, I need you,’” he says, letting out a deep breath. “ ‘You are so beautiful.’”

For a moment, Jester is so still Caleb fears – he doesn’t even know what, that it was too much for her, that she doesn’t return the sentiment, that she was never attached at all. But then she rolls onto him and hugs him so tight he can hardly breathe, a barrage of kisses raining down on his face and neck. “I love you too,” she whispers in his ear, and kisses him soundly.

It takes a second for the words to sink in, and Caleb sighs in profound relief, warmth sweeping over him as he nestles into the sheets with Jester, each kiss growing lazier and more languid. And as he drifts off to sleep with her curled up in his arms, he thinks about her painting of him, and the golden glow around his face, and wonders if maybe, just maybe, he earned some of that after all.


	13. Chapter 13

Jester finds Fjord at a table tucked away in the corner of the library, fast asleep on top of an open book. His sleep looks deep but not particularly restful as she approaches, his hands and eyelids twitching, a tiny frown pinching his brows, and he doesn’t stir as Jester pulls out a chair next to him and sits down. When his frown deepens and little unconscious sounds of distress start escaping his lips, she shakes his shoulder gently and says, “Fjord, wake up.” He grunts, fingers spasming. “Wake up.”

With a gasp he starts and sits up, and immediately bursts into a coughing fit, nearby students craning their necks to look at him. With finals around the corner, the library is decently populated even at twelve-thirty a.m. Fjord’s eyes are frantic, but when he sees Jester, he manages a deep breath and slumps back in his chair. “Oh,” he says. “Jester. Hi. Had a – had a bad dream.” His accent tilts unfamiliar at first before sliding back into his regular Texan drawl.

“I could tell,” she says quietly. The textbook he was using as a pillow shows mostly a lot of text and a couple of graphs that Jester can’t make heads or tails of, and a small puddle of drool wrinkles one page. “What was it about?”

Fjord runs a hand through his dark hair, pushing it off his face with a troubled look. “Dreamt I was drownin’.”

That sounds highly unpleasant, and also explains the coughing. And now that Jester looks closer, she can see the dark circles under his eyes, the unshaven shadow around his mouth and jaw, the grease in the roots of his hair. “Fjord, are you okay?” she asks.

He groans, rubbing at his face. “I dunno. I haven’t been sleepin’ well, I keep havin’ these weird dreams. I think it’s the stress, you know?” Propping his chin on his hand, he manages a tired smile for Jester. “So I’m hopin’ it’ll all go away once finals are over and I graduate.”

Remembering her conversation with Beau, Jester asks, “What will you do then?”

Fjord lets out a deep breath. “I think I’m gonna go look for my dad.”

“Oh,” says Jester. “You mean your real dad? Your bio dad?”

“No! No,” snorts Fjord disdainfully. “I don’t care about him. No, I’m gonna go look for Vandren, my foster dad.” He rubs unconsciously at his chest, where the yellow eye tattoo sits. “He’s got to be out there somewhere.”

“I’m sure you’ll find him.” Reaching out, Jester covers his folded hands with one of hers, her hand so small compared to his. “And if not, let me know what I can do to help.”

“Thank you, Jester,” says Fjord, his eyes as warm and steady as his voice. “That means a lot.”

“Anytime.”

\--

Drugs, Jester had told Caleb. Drugs at the party where Mollymauk Tealeaf was killed. Something about it turned the wheels in his brain, gears clicking against each other, and for weeks and weeks he’s been trying to put together what Ikithon had to do with it and why Essek went to testify and what the connection is between everything and now, maybe, he might have it –

In the dining hall, he catches sight of Beauregard, walking with a tall, black-haired young woman in very goth attire, and about to leave the room. “Beauregard!” he shouts hoarsely, hurrying over, and she turns towards him with one curious eyebrow raised. The goth woman watches him with cool skepticism. “May I ask you a question?”

Extremely wary, Beauregard says, “What?”

“The night that Tealeaf was killed, Jester said there were drugs at the party. What kind?” When Beauregard hesitates, Caleb adds earnestly, urgent, “Please, I will not get you in trouble, I promise. I just need to know.”

Beauregard exchanges a long glance with the goth woman, who shrugs. “Academic performance enhancers,” she says evenly. “They started getting real popular last year, people take them for fun. I hooked up with this one girl, she had scars all up inside her arm from the injections.” Her eyes narrow. “You know, now that I think about it, she was a Physics major…”

The gears in Caleb’s brain spin so fast that his breath disappears, and at last, he understands, nervous energy flooding his body. “Thank you,” he says to Beauregard, already starting to move away. “You are right, what a strange coincidence that is…”

“Wait, hang on!” Beauregard shouts after him as he rushes through the hall. “What’s going on?”

But Caleb doesn’t bother to answer her, she’s smart, she’s going to Stanford, she’ll figure it out. Instead he rushes outside, through the rapidly-warming May sunshine, into the cool dimness of the science building, and up to Dean Ikithon’s office, not even bothering to knock as he bursts in. “I kept thinking,” pants Caleb, to Ikithon’s glacially disapproving look, “what could possibly involve you in the Tealeaf trial, what could be said there that would possibly incriminate you, why the Dean of Sciences would be involved in the murder of a theater student, and now I know.” He shuts the door behind him, heart racing, staring straight into Ikithon’s cold gray eyes. “The drugs are yours, right? What they were taking at the party. You supplied them. You’ve been supplying them to students, to teachers, for a while now.” Chest heaving, he falls silent, riding an exhilarating high at having finally confronted Ikithon, ready for the flashing eyes and the angry reprimand –

Sighing, Ikithon opens a desk drawer and pulls out a plain white envelope, sealed. “What I have here is a signed statement,” he says, implacable as a glacier, “dated from before today, where someone, it does not matter who, informed me that you are having an affair with a student of yours.” He pauses delicately, adds, “With Jester Lavorre, in fact.”

Ice floods Caleb’s veins.

Frantic humming floods his brain, but he can’t form words.

“Well?” says Ikithon, eyebrows raised. “Have you nothing to say?”

“I…” manages Caleb hoarsely, and he knows it’s too late, that his stunned silence is as good as a confession. “How long have you been sitting on this?”

“Oh, as long as I needed to.”

Caleb’s brain finally kicks into gear, and he bursts out, “Sir, please, do not punish Jester for this, the indiscretion was mine, I should have controlled myself –”

“I have no interest in Jester Lavorre aside from the money her mother promised us,” says Ikithon, waving away Caleb’s words. “Which I will not see a penny of unless she walks the stage in a week’s time. Your concern, while admirable, is misplaced. It is _you_ who should be worried about repercussions, Caleb.” Ikithon pauses, licks his thin lips, and then says, “Or should I say, Bren.”

Caleb feels sick. “How do you know my old name?”

“Oh, it’s not hard to run a background check,” says Ikithon, gesturing to the chair in front of his desk. “Now please, sit.”

What can Caleb do but numbly obey? The stiff leather squeaks underneath him, the chair back rigid and unyielding. Turning the pale envelope over in his bony fingers, Ikithon eyes Caleb shrewdly. “Now,” he says. “You can go to President Da’leth with this story you have of drugs and intrigue, but I promise you this envelope will reach him first. And do you think, once he reads this, he will see you as anything more than someone lying desperately to try and protect himself?”

It’s not a rhetorical question. “No,” Caleb says woodenly.

“Now, on the other hand…” Ikithon places the envelope flat on the desk, equidistant between himself and Caleb. “You are a very clever man, Bren, capable of some very clever things. I have certain projects I could really use your help with, and it would be a shame to see you be fired over something as silly as an indiscretion.”

An uneasy crinkle runs down Caleb’s spine. “What kind of projects?”

Ikithon smiles, perfectly bland and benign. “Oh, nothing too demanding, just some research. But time-consuming enough that I would be prepared to offer you a long-term position. Tenure even, perhaps.”

Sudden vertigo hits Caleb, a dark road unwinding from underneath his feet into a bottomless abyss. He thinks of Astrid in the laboratory late at night and the haggard look in her eyes, and the weight of Essek’s subpoena envelope in his hands, and crouching in his high school dormitory bathroom in the middle of the night with a lighter flame held against his forearm. Ikithon watches him, flat and patient as a snake waiting to strike, and the longer the silence lasts, the denser the air in the office becomes. “You know what,” manages Caleb thickly at last, heart thudding dully, “as tempting an offer as that is, I am afraid I cannot accept it.” He forces himself to stand, but as he does, he can breathe a little easier, look Ikithon in the eye a little more direct. “Consider this my official resignation.”

He doesn’t miss the flash of anger in Ikithon’s gaze, but it no longer touches him. “Think _very_ carefully about what you are turning down,” Ikithon says, biting his consonants off, and holds the envelope up. “I can ruin your entire career with this even after you leave –”

“You can try,” retorts Caleb, as bland as Ikithon at his most emotionless. “But what good does it do you?” And before Ikithon can do more than narrow his eyes, irritated, Caleb plucks the envelope off the desk, leaves the room, and takes off at a dead sprint down the hallway.

He passes a couple of staff who give him an odd look but Caleb doesn’t stop until he’s out of the building and out into the main quadrangle, sweating and panting for air. Ikithon’s old, he can’t move as fast as Caleb, so Caleb speedwalks over to the science building and into a stairwell where he can collapse against the wall, hands braced on his knees, and quietly hyperventilate.

The sharp sound of heels on flooring descends the stairs. “You know, when I said I wanted a front row seat to your demise, I thought it would be less pathetic than this,” says Astrid.

Gasping, Caleb looks up as she descends the final few stairs to stand opposite him with her arms folded. Angry embers smolder in his stomach. “Was it you?”

Eyebrows contracting, Astrid says, “What?”

“Someone told Ikithon about Jester and I. Was it you?” demands Caleb raggedly, staggering upright. “Astrid –”

“_No_,” she snaps. “I told you I wouldn’t, and I didn’t.” Her gaze flicks down to the envelope clenched in his hands. “He knows?”

“Ja.” Caleb rakes a hand through his hair, dragging it out of his face. “He, ah… This is a signed statement, from someone who found us out,” he says, slowly uncrumpling the envelope. The corner of envelope flap has started lifting, and Caleb slides his fingertip underneath, tearing open the seal.

The folded paper inside is empty.

“Tricky bastard,” mutters Astrid.

Caleb stares down at the blank paper in his faintly-trembling hands, the conversation with Ikithon echoing round and round in his head. “Doesn’t matter anyway,” he hears himself say. “I’m quitting.”

Astrid’s eyebrows climb up her forehead. “For real?”

Nodding, Caleb stuffs the envelope and paper in his pocket. “The semester’s practically over. Once it ends, I’ll be out of here.”

“Where?” she asks, cocking her head, eyes fixed curiously on him. “Back with your girl?”

“I…” Only now does the full impact of what Caleb said hit him, and he has to take a moment to gather his jumbled thoughts. “Perhaps. She will be happy about that, at least.”

Astrid nods slowly, still appraising him. “Well,” she says, “good luck with that.”

“Thank you,” he says. There are still circles under Astrid’s eyes, and her cheeks are more pinched than ever. “Listen, Astrid,” he says, fumbling in his wallet to pull out his therapist’s card, handing it to her. “If you need – when you need to get out, this is a good man, he will help you.” Taking a deep breath, Caleb says, “And so will I.”

For a long while, Astrid eyes the offered card, and then she looks up at Caleb with glittering eyes and a dry little smile. “Thank you,” she says, like a door closing, and moves towards the stairwell exit without reaching to take the card. “You’re a good man, Caleb Widogast. But you were a terrible boyfriend.” And with that she leaves.

Caleb remains in the stairwell, taking the occasional deep breath to steady himself. Eventually, he exits into the empty hallway, and from there walks out into the light of day.

\--

There is a letter for Jester on the kitchen table.

Among the coupon booklets and flyers for local restaurants and other mail detritus, it lies square and white, with multiple stamps in one corner and her address written in a rounded, regular script. The return address is in Stuttgart, Germany, from an Anna Ermendrud.

Breath catching, Jester picks up the envelope, turning it over slowly in her hands but not opening it. It’s addressed to her, she could open it right now, she _should_ open it right now, but she holds onto it instead. She’d assumed that any response would be a good one, but now, Jester wonders if that was a naïve assumption. Maybe Anna Ermendrud is really mad at her for reaching out. Maybe she wants to never talk to Caleb again. Maybe this was all a huge mistake.

With a sudden decisive flourish, Jester tucks the letter into her bag. She’ll tell Caleb she has it, and then she’ll open it.

\--

Caleb meets Essek off-campus, at a chain coffee shop far enough away that there’s not a strong chance of running into a familiar student or professor. They find seats together at the wooden bar running the length of the front window wall, Caleb taking a slow first drink of his caramel macchiato. Essek has a little espresso cup piled high with foam, and he sips at it delicately before smiling at Caleb. “So.”

“So,” says Caleb, setting his drink down. “It was drugs, wasn’t it. What you testified in court about.”

Dark eyes gleaming, Essek nods approvingly at him over his espresso in silent assent. “Christ,” mutters Caleb, dragging his fingers through his hair. “Performance enhancers, right? Is that… all they are? Beau– A student told me other students are taking them recreationally.”

“There are rumors Ikithon is brewing something custom in his labs, but even I don’t believe those,” says Essek, idly toying with the silver spoon his espresso came with. “But yes. Performance enhancers. Popular particularly among high-achieving students who want to get an edge on the rest of their compatriots.”

“Ja, I know the type,” mutters Caleb, staring into his coffee. A little too well, unfortunately. “So is anything going to come of your testimony?”

Lips curling in a smile, Essek says, “That is a matter between my attorney and I.” Espresso foam clings to his upper lip as he sips his coffee. “Have no fear, Caleb. This is not over yet. Ikithon will fall.”

“You think so?”

“I do.”

Despite his best efforts, it’s hard not to feel a thread of optimism as the sun shines warmly through the windows and the sweetness of caramel coats his palette. “Well,” says Caleb, and raises his coffee mug in a toast that Essek knowingly returns. “Here’s hoping.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit sexual content.

The only sounds in the classroom are the rustling of pencils on paper, the ticking of the clock on the wall, and the occasional cough or shifting chair. Jester makes her way through the final exam question by question, and although she tries her hardest to focus on getting the right answers, the tremulous feeling in her stomach is impossible to ignore. This is it. This is the last time she’ll ever sit in this classroom with Caleb.

She glances up at him. He sits behind the lectern, glasses on his nose and his nose in a book, dust motes dancing around him and his copper hair glinting in a beam of sunlight. Like the painting she did of him, Jester thinks, and admires him for a minute. It still her out of the blue every now and then like it did when she first saw him, how pretty he is.

Eventually, Jester sighs and returns to her test. The final is fifteen percent of her grade, but thanks to Caleb’s tutelage she’s been scraping by with a low C. All she has to do is not tank this completely and she’ll be clear to graduate. Thank goodness it’s multiple choice, at least.

She finishes with only a few minutes to spare, and uses her extra time to double-check her answers. Normally she wouldn’t care, but this is kind of important. And also she’s sticking around until everyone else leaves and it’s just her and Caleb anyway.

“Everyone, your time is up, please bring your tests to the front of the class,” Caleb calls to the remaining students. Several sigh or grumble in disappointment as they gather their papers and file up to hand them in.

Jester waits until she’s last, turning over her test paper and completed answer sheet. “Thank you,” says Caleb, taking them from her. His fingers brush hers for the tiniest second. “How did it go?”

“Pretty well, although there were some questions I wasn’t sure about…” Which is true, but that’s not really the point.

Glancing around to make sure no one else is in earshot, Caleb says, “Well, why don’t you come by my office later and we can go over them?” His blue eyes burn with tightly-controlled longing.

Jester’s cheeks warm and she smiles, despite the desperate tremor in her gut. “Okay.”

That tremor persists all through lunch, making it hard for her to eat. Mom flies up in four days and graduation is next weekend and then Jester flies back home and she doesn’t know what’s happening next. She doesn’t know when she’s seeing Caleb again and although she’s sure it’ll be soon, the prospect of separation is killing her. And then there’s the letter from Anna Ermendrud in her bag that Jester can feel as distinctly as if it was made out of lead –

“Jester,” says Caleb, as she steps into his office, and strides right towards her, and takes her face in his hands and kisses her so forcefully he pushes her up against the closed door.

Thank God, thinks Jester absurdly, and kisses Caleb back, her fingers tangling in his hair, her body flush against his. But just as she’s getting really hot and bothered, Caleb pulls back, lips and cheeks flushed and his hair in disarray. “Jester, I – I should tell you –”

“Later,” breathes Jester, tugging him back in, and it must not be that important because Caleb surrenders with a groan, his lips hot on hers. He grabs her hips, grinding into her, and Jester mouths at his neck and jaw, yanking his shirt out of his pants so she can rake her hands up his stomach. Fumbling in his haste, Caleb unzips Jester’s jeans and gets his hand down her panties, and Jester whines into his neck as he finds her clit. With her back to the door like this she _has_ to stay quiet, otherwise anyone walking by could hear, and Jester stifles a gasp in Caleb’s skin as he sinks two fingers into her.

The hard wood flat against her back, Caleb’s chest pressed against hers, Jester clings to him and buries her moans in his neck. Caleb thumbs her clit, his teeth closing on Jester’s earlobe, and a frisson runs down her spine. Whatever nervous energy drives her must possess Caleb too because he shudders, stroking her urgently, and Jester rides his hand until orgasm hits her hard and fast.

Panting, Jester leans into Caleb, her head spinning faintly. His hand smooths over the small of her back in a gentle caress startlingly at odds with their frantic drive of moments ago.

Well, if this is the last time they get to have sex in this office, Jester better make it a good one. Looking up under her lashes at Caleb, she drops to her knees and unzips his trousers, and before Caleb’s brain has a chance to catch up with his dick, she pulls his underwear down to free his erection and takes as much of him as she can into her mouth.

“_Oh,_” says Caleb faintly, bracing himself with his palms flat on the door, his hair hanging in his face. With her hands on his hips, Jester can feel him shaking, heat radiating off his bare skin. His breath rasps harsh in his throat, and when Jester swirls her tongue around the head of his cock, Caleb turns his head and sinks his teeth into his bicep to keep from making a sound.

Her memory’s nothing like Caleb’s, but Jester burns this moment into her mind for forever, Caleb’s heavy breathing and flushed cheeks, his teeth bared and brow furrowed with the effort of keeping quiet, chest heaving under his partially-unbuttoned shirt. And when he comes, he shakes all over, and a tiny cry escapes his lips anyway.

“So,” says Jester, afterwards, taking a swig from her water bottle and trying to ignore how her heart thrums like hummingbird wings in her chest. “Caleb, I need to tell you something…”

Seated on the desk next to her, Caleb raises his eyebrows. “As it turns out, I also have to tell you something.”

Oh, right. “You go first,” says Jester hastily.

Sighing heavily, Caleb rubs his hands down his thighs. “I resigned my position,” he says. “Last week. After this semester ends I am officially unemployed.”

Jester stares at him, taking a moment to parse his words and put them together. “What?” she says. “_Why_?”

“Ikithon knows.” Caleb’s voice is dry as bone. “About our affair. The options he offered were either he bring the truth to President Da’leth, or I help him with whatever special research project he has going currently.” Caleb sighs deeply, somewhere between disappointed and relieved. “So I chose neither.”

Jester has the feeling there’s more under the surface that she doesn’t know yet. “Why don’t you want to work for Dean Ikithon?” she asks in a small voice.

“Well, it is, ah, sort of complicated…” says Caleb, and Jester thinks he’s going to do the stupid thing where he leaves it at that, but he _explains_, about how Ikithon is giving drugs to students and how Astrid is doing something shady for him and all the dark misgivings he’s been having for years, his fingers absentmindedly rubbing at his scars. “And now here we are,” Caleb says at the end, worry pulling at the corners of his mouth as he glances at Jester. “I am… terrified, to be honest. I have no idea where I am going from here. But I have a strange sort of hope, if you can believe that.” He manages a little smile. “Maybe that is because of you.”

Jester’s heart flutters again, and she reaches out and grabs Caleb’s hand. “I’m proud of you,” she says. “Caleb. You did a really big thing.”

He ducks his head with a shamefaced grin. “Big, ja,” he says. “But maybe stupid as well.”

“I don’t think so,” says Jester, and then another thought occurs to her. “How did Ikithon even _know_?” She gasps, realizing. “It was Astrid who told him, wasn’t it? I _bet_ it was her, trying to get back at you, maybe she’s even _sleeping_ with Ikithon and that’s why she won’t leave and she’s telling him _everything –_”

“Jester, Jester – stop.” Caleb squeezes her hand, grimacing slightly. “No, it wasn’t her, I don’t know who told him. It could have been anyone, really. It doesn’t matter now.”

“It _does_,” insists Jester on principle, but maybe Caleb’s right. Her calf nudges up against her bag, and she remembers the letter, and the nervous tremor in her stomach starts again as she knows it’s time. “Caleb, I… I have something for you.”

“Oh?” he says, curious.

“Yeah.” Biting her lip, Jester bends down and picks her bag up, slowly drawing the letter out and keeping the address facing herself. “_So._ You know how, that one time I was at your place, and you wrote down your parents’ address on an envelope?”

Brow wrinkled, Caleb says, “Ja,” and then his face falls in horrified realization. “_Jester_. You _didn’t_.”

“I did but that’s because I knew you never would and you were using to punish yourself and that’s not fair to you or your parents and I know you miss them and maybe they really miss you and I couldn’t just sit around and not do anything,” says Jester in a high-pitched rush, clutching the letter to her chest. “So I wrote to your parents. And, um. Your mom wrote back.”

Caleb stares at the letter now, a new kind of fear on his pale face. “What did – what did she say?” he says, hoarse as sandpaper.

“I don’t know,” whispers Jester apologetically. “I haven’t opened it. I wanted to tell you first.”

Wordlessly, Caleb holds out a faintly-trembling hand.

“Are you sure?” says Jester. “What if she’s really angry at me and says angry things –”

“Give me the letter.”

Jester hands it to him, the nervous thrum at a fever pitch as Caleb rips open the seal with his long fingers, pulling out a small, neatly-folded sheet of paper. Hands laced together anxiously, Jester watches as he reads, ready for every twitch of his face or minute change in demeanor. But at first, Caleb’s face stays completely blank, only his eyes moving as he scans the letter. Eventually, he reaches the end of the page and turns the paper over to read the other side. The stillness of his expression terrifies her. “Caleb?” says Jester quietly, unable to stand waiting any longer.

She can tell when he’s finished because his eyes stop tracking left-to-right, instead staring down at the signature. And then, like ice cracking, Caleb drops his face into his hand and his shoulders start to shake silently.

“_Caleb_,” says Jester, worried, but he holds the letter out to her with his other hand, a faint, broken noise like sobs eking out from him. Snatching the letter, Jester reads it, frantically at first, and then as the meaning of the words sinks in she slows, relief and sorrow twisting together inside her.

_Dear Miss Lavorre,_

_ Thank you so much for your letter. Please excuse the lateness of my reply, as it caught me by surprise and I confess it took me several days to even consider how I wanted to respond._

_ It has been so many years since I heard from Bren that I had begun to think of him as dead. When a new acquaintance asks me if I have any children, often it is easier to just say no than to explain what happened and relive the heartache of so many years ago. So when I heard from you that he is alive, and well, I do not have the words in English to describe the many emotions I felt. _

_ Bren is right, in that when we got his letter of apology after he left, we were both too angry to respond. I more so than his father. What Bren said to his father was terrible, and wounded him deeply. I think a little part of him died that day. Certainly he was never the same afterwards. And it was anger on his behalf, as much as my own, that kept me from reaching out. _

_ You understand, don’t you? You are very much in love. What would you do if someone hurt Bren?_

_ I said Frederick was never the same afterwards. He shot himself in the head five years ago. _

_ For weeks after I buried Frederick I was furious, and in my grief and anger I blamed Bren. I was so sure, that if Bren had not said what he did, if he had not wounded Frederick so, my husband would still be with me today. Maybe that is true, I cannot be sure. Frederick did not leave a note. He was not a communicative man._

_ But I am an old woman, getting older, and you speak of Bren as if he were in a self-imposed purgatory, atoning for his sins. I am tired, and anger no longer serves me the way it used to. Perhaps now, after all these years, I can consider reconciliation. Certainly, you seem like a very caring, optimistic young woman, and so if Bren has captured your heart I can only imagine he is not the same bitter, misguided youth who left us behind. _

_ Yes, please tell Bren I would like to speak to him. My phone number is +49(0)711-17 30 000. I like to think if his father was alive, he would like to speak to him to._

_Best regards, _

_Anna Ermendrud_

“Oh, _Caleb_,” whispers Jester, tears filling her eyes. He still shakes with silent sobs, so Jester does the only thing she can and pulls him into her arms, holding him tight. Caleb presses his face to her shoulder, his tears hot on her skin, his fingers knotted in her shirt. And if Jester doesn’t know what to say, she realizes, that’s okay, because there’s nothing to be said. Not right now. But she can hold onto Caleb, and she can love him, and be there for as long as he needs her, however long that may be.

\--

Telling Jester about his resignation went about as well as Caleb expected, to be honest. How he feels about Jester writing to his mother behind his back and her response is a far more complicated tangle that he puts aside for now as best he can, leaving only a dull ache in his heart as he prepares for what will undoubtedly be a worse conversation: telling Nott he resigned.

He waits until after she’s finished helping him grade final exams, knowing if he tells her from the onset it will take her far too long to focus enough to work. “So,” says Caleb, hands folded on his desk, seeing no point in softening the news. “Nott, it has been a pleasure having you as my TA, but I am afraid we cannot continue this arrangement. I resigned my position at this university, effective once the semester ends.”

Nott gapes at him, eyes round, before abruptly shifting into a suspicious glare. “It’s that Lavorre girl, _isn’t_ it?” she accuses, half rising out of her chair across from Caleb. “She’s seduced you into leaving your job so you can go back to Hollywood with her –”

“_No, _Nott, it is not – I mean, it is partially because of her, but not –” Not like that, Caleb wants to say, except the realization that he is free now to travel to Los Angeles with Jester hits him with the force of a comet and for a moment he can only blink dazedly. “Yes and no,” he says, collecting himself. “Dean Ikithon found out about our affair, and rather than be embarrassed and censured when he made his findings public, I chose to quietly resign.” He fixes Nott with his gaze, hoping she will read his sincerity. “I do not regret the decision, nor leave this place with a heavy heart. But I want to make sure _you_ will be all right.”

“Difficult to tell, now that I don’t have a _job,_” shrills Nott.

“There are other professors you can work for –”

“I don’t want to work for any of them, I want _you._” The second she says that, Nott clamps her lips shut, and her brown cheeks turn ruddy.

After every other revelation of the past week, Caleb only has so much emotional energy left to spare, and he stares blankly at Nott before leaning back in his chair with a sigh. “Nott…”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” she mutters. “What does it matter anyway, right? I’m _married_! Happily married! I mean, sure, maybe when I first met you I had a crush, but _now_ after I’ve gotten to know you –”

“_Nott,_” Caleb cuts her off, unable to keep a laugh out of his voice as she grows steadily more agitated. “It’s all right, I don’t mind.”

Shoulders hunched, Nott eyes him disbelievingly.

“Look, I am serious,” says Caleb. “I know you have been sending money home to your family. Will they be all right? Should I –”

“Caleb, you don’t have to do _anything_.” Nott sighs pityingly. “You’re the one without a job. Worry about yourself first, okay?”

This time it is Caleb’s turn to squint back at her incredulously, though in his heart he is relieved that he doesn’t have to take on any additional financial burdens. “You are sure you will be all right?”

“_Yes,_” says Nott, exasperated, and this time Caleb believes her. “More all right than you, I bet. So what are you doing next?”

“Well…” says Caleb slowly, “it’s funny that you mention it, because maybe I will go to LA with her after all…”

Nott sighs wistfully, but there’s a glint in her eyes that might almost be pride. “Take care of yourself, you hear?” she says. “Don’t let all those glittery movie stars turn your head.”

The thought of Marion Lavorre comes to mind, and Caleb stifles an absurd laugh. “I will do my best,” he promises. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

\--

These strawberry and white chocolate cookies might be the best ones Jester has made yet, golden and melt-in-the-mouth buttery, with chunks of creamy white chocolate and tart freeze-dried strawberry. “Have you called your mom yet?” she asks Caleb, holding out a cookie still warm from the oven to him where he sits at the kitchen table of her apartment.

Accepting the cookie, Caleb takes an experimental bite. “Not yet,” he says. “But I will, I promise. There is just a lot that needs to be said. This is excellent, by the way,” and he holds up the cookie before fitting the rest of it into his mouth. “Very good.”

Jester beams at the compliment from her stand by the oven, more cookies cooling on the counter behind her. “Thank you,” she says, and takes another one for herself. What these cookies really need, she decides, is a glass of milk to go with them, and she opens the fridge, inspecting the milk carton to see if it’s still good.

The apartment door opens and closes, and Jester straightens as Beau kicks off her flip-flops with a wary look at Caleb. “Hey,” Beau says.

“Hello, Beauregard,” says Caleb, with a little wave.

Beau’s upper lip curls. “_So_ weird,” she mutters. “Anyway, Jess. Got something you should see.” Fishing a folded, slightly crumpled newspaper clipping out of her pocket, she hands it to Jester.

It’s a full article from the local paper, creased to fit in Beau’s pocket, but Jester doesn’t need to unfold it to read the headline. _LORENZO CONVICTED IN TEALEAF MURDER TRIAL. _

“Oh,” says Jester, very quietly.

She doesn’t know how she feels. Sad? Relieved? Numb? At first she doesn’t want to read the article, doesn’t want to see the inevitable picture of Lorenzo’s ugly face. But then she thinks about yesterday and Caleb reading the letter from his mother, and if he can be brave, so can she.

The article is a far cry from the exposé Jester read earlier in the year, its sentences dry and straightforward. The trial officially convened three weeks ago. The prosecution accused Lorenzo of second-degree murder. The defense argued for voluntary manslaughter before the trial but were unable to get the charges changed before the trial started. The prosecution primarily leaned on eyewitness accounts and the brutal nature of the murder itself. The defense argued that the toxic environment present, including the drugs supplied by Dean Ikithon, were the deciding factor and pushed both parties into a conflict they normally would have avoided. The prosecution countered that neither Molly nor Lorenzo were on any drugs, and also that Lorenzo was not a University of Richmond student, and also that he was a rational adult capable of making his own choices. The jury voted unanimously to convict him, and he was sentenced to twenty years in prison without parole.

Jester exhales slowly, aware of both Caleb and Beau watching her intently. “Here,” she says, handing the article to Caleb, stalling the moment when she has to react. He reads it much faster than she does.

The brief surge of vicious satisfaction that Jester felt when she read Lorenzo was convicted fades, leaving nothing in its place. It won’t bring Molly back, she thinks, staring at the kitchen tiles under her feet. Nothing will.

And that’s when she realizes the last scrap of denial she’s been hanging onto all along, the thing that kept her from talking about Molly, because if she spoke of his death as real, if she fully accepted it, then it would be _over_. Except it _is_ over. It was over when Molly was declared dead on arrival at the hospital, and not even Molly’s charm and clever comments and improbable luck can change that. Jester lets out a shuddering breath, arms wrapped around her aching middle, and as she closes her eyes a tear escapes one to roll down her cheek.

“Jester?” says Caleb, standing and approaching her.

And she could wipe the tear away and stand up straight and smile and say “I’m fine” but that’s not fair to Caleb and it’s not fair to Beau and it’s not fair to _her_. Jester turns into Caleb and wraps her arms around him and buries her face in his chest, her tears soaking into his shirt.

Caleb holds her tight, anchoring her, fingers gently working through her hair. There’s no storm of tears for Molly this time; instead, Jester inhales and exhales slow and deep, sorrow washing over her like rolling waves. Footsteps come up behind her, and Beau’s hand falls on her shoulder, narrow but strong.

None of them say anything, the soft sounds of wind and trees and traffic outside creating a background of white noise. Caleb’s heart beats under Jester’s ear, and his breath moves steadily, and gradually the waves recede, leaving a vast calmness in their place.

Sighing again, Jester dries her tears on Caleb’s shirt and rests against him, held secure in his arms the way she held him yesterday. The stillness she feels echoes inside her, hollow but not in a bad way: the vast emptiness of an abandoned cathedral, or an unexplored cavern, or the unknown deeps of the sea. Beau rubs at her shoulder a couple times before drawing her hand away. “Oh shit, more cookies again?” she says.

“Yes!” Jester surfaces, and quickly smiles up at Caleb. The tender expression on his face makes her heart thud. “They’re strawberry and white chocolate. They’re _really_ good.”

Beau, her mouth already full of cookie, nods in agreement. Reaching over, Jester takes both a cookie for herself and another for Caleb, and this one she holds up to his lips. Ignoring Beau’s dramatic retching, Caleb takes an obedient bite, his blue eyes crinkling with a smile, and all is right with the world.

\--

The restaurant Caleb and Jester reconvene with Marion Lavorre at is a far fancier one than Caleb would ever consider on his own, all Southern gentility with floor-length velvet curtains and elaborate white scrollwork around the windows and place settings of multiple gleaming silver utensils. Though they only parted to drive from the university to the restaurant, Jester runs over to her mother like they haven’t seen each other in months, her black graduation robe fluttering in her wake.

If Marion was beautiful online, she is dazzling in person. Glossy waves of dark hair tumble down her back, diamonds sparkle on her ears, and her deep red dress wraps around her curves like a sinuous waterfall, the neckline plunging to reveal impeccable cleavage. In the private dining salon they occupy, safe from the prying cameras of paparazzi, she fills the room with the glamour of Hollywood long gone by, old grace and older money.

“My little sapphire,” she croons, hugging Jester tight, and then holds her out so the two women can beam at each other. “I am so proud of you.”

Caleb’s dress shoes sink uncertainly into the plush floral carpet, and he sits in the chair the waiter pulls out for him, uncomfortably aware of the ill fit and cheap fabric of his suit. Another waiter pours three glasses of champagne, murmuring congratulations, and Marion thanks him graciously as she sits at the table. Jester pulls her chair up close enough to Caleb that she can link her fingers through his, her knee bumping against his leg, and he smiles at her, grateful for that small anchoring contact.

“I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to finally meet you, Caleb,” says Marion. “I have heard _so _much about you from Jester.”

Her voice is so warm and genuine it breathes new life into the standard pleasantries, and Caleb can’t help smiling back at her. “Thank you,” he says. “It is very nice to meet you as well.” Chin resting on her hands, Jester beams between the two of them.

The waiter leans over Caleb’s shoulder, handing him a menu. Dull horror sets in when Caleb sees the prices alongside each dish name written in elegant cursive. A plate of salmon and roasted vegetables costs over half his food budget for the week.

Nudging his arm, Jester leans over. “Don’t worry about it,” she whispers, and although she’s trying to be quiet Caleb is sure the waiter, her mother, and her mother’s security guard can all hear. “It’s on my mom.”

Ears hot, Caleb straightens his spine and looks straight at Marion, who smiles reassuringly at him. “Your generosity is appreciated, but I am all right, thank you,” he says stiffly.

“Please, Caleb, consider this a token of appreciation to the man who made it possible for my daughter to graduate college.” Wry humor lightens Marion’s voice. “Especially since from what I hear, my promised donation will not be reaching you.”

“Ah, it was never going to anyway,” snorts Caleb, and eases the tension in his shoulders. It’s a gift, not an insult, he reminds himself. And Marion really is disarmingly easy to talk to, so much so that Caleb orders himself steak and eggs and potatoes and a side Caesar salad without any self-consciousness. It helps, too, that this little salon is closed off from the restaurant, no curious eyes or craning necks targeted on Marion. Caleb assumes that’s why the pine-green velvet curtains are securely drawn as well, despite the beautiful May day outside.

Effortlessly, Marion takes charge of the conversation, drawing the story of Jester and Caleb out with gentle leading questions. Caleb’s sure she already heard all of this from Jester, but she listens to him with gently rapt attention all the same. When the food arrives, Caleb makes his way through his meal slowly, savoring steak seared to caramelization on the outside but tender and juicy on the inside, golden-brown roast potatoes and a fried egg with the yolk still runny, his salad crisp and green under the creamy dressing. The champagne’s not half bad either, he thinks as if he were any judge of fine wine.

Later, though, after they’ve ordered dessert (strawberry shortcake, for the table to share) and Jester has excused herself to the restroom, Marion leans forward across the table towards Caleb. “While I am sorry to hear you no longer have a position, I think your choice to resign rather than play the games of your administration is admirable,” she says quietly. Her eyes aren’t blue like Jester’s, but rather a deep, velvety brown. “And I would like to help you if I can.”

“How so?” The waiter hovers over him, bottle of champagne at the ready, but Caleb covers his glass with one hand.

“Your plan is to travel back to Los Angeles with Jester, yes?”

Caleb nods, slowly withdrawing his hand from the crystal champagne flute.

“One of my good friends is the wife of the current Dean of Sciences at USC,” Marion says. “To my knowledge, they are not looking to hire at the moment, but I am sure that if I spoke to her –”

“Ah,” says Caleb, understanding. “Once again, thank you for your generosity, but I prefer to go my own way.”

Marion tilts her head and frowns in a very Jester-like gesture. “Are you sure? Los Angeles is an expensive city to live in, and jobs are not easy to find –”

Caleb half-laughs, all too aware already, having done a very brief and terrifying search of available apartments in the area. “Call it pride, or maybe paranoia, but the prospect of having my employment tied to the goodwill of my girlfriend’s mother is a bit too much for me,” he says, and to her credit Marion chuckles understandingly. “But I also know your favor is not to be lightly turned aside, Frau Lavorre.”

“So I am told,” she murmurs, taking a sip of champagne.

“Perhaps we can make a bargain, then.” Once Caleb looks past the diamonds and the designer dress and the hair and the nails and the makeup and the indefinable glamour that surrounds Marion at all times, he can see someone else: Jester’s mother, the woman who raised her and comforted her and would still do anything to protect her. The thought both reassures and emboldens him. “I will travel with the resources I have, and do what I can to gain lawful employment. But when I inevitably exhaust the limited avenues available to me –” Marion nods in wry acknowledgement “– then I will be very, very pleased to accept whatever assistance you see fit to give me.”

A slow, steady smile illuminates Marion’s face. “I believe you have yourself a deal, Mr. Widogast,” she says, and holds out one elegant, manicured hand. Caleb takes it, her skin smooth against his, and gives her a firm handshake. “Take care of my daughter.”

“I will do my best, but I suspect she is more than capable of taking care of herself.”

Marion sighs wistfully. “Oh, yes, she is.”


	15. Epilogue

“Well, while I’m sorry to see you go, I’m very pleased that you’re taking this new step,” says Mr. Clay – Caduceus, as he keeps reminding Caleb to call him. His mane of tangled red hair falls to one side of his gaunt face as he smiles at Caleb, twirling a pencil idly between his long fingers. “When do you leave?”

“Bright and early tomorrow morning,” says Caleb. As always, his therapist’s office is filled with burgeoning plants, their leaves broad and waxy green in the morning sunlight that streams through the windows and refracts off the quartz crystals on Caduceus’ desk. “The hope is to drive to Tennessee by the end of the day, and to make it to California before the end of the week.”

“Ambitious,” remarks Caduceus, getting to his feet, and Caleb rises as well. “Thanks for stopping by, and if you need anything, or have any questions, don’t hesitate to give me a call.”

Shaking Caduceus’ proffered hand, Caleb promises, “I will. Thank you.”

Caduceus smiles widely. “Take care, Caleb.” As Caleb turns to leave his office, Caduceus remarks, “I always did say you had a destiny ahead of you.”

Frowning, Caleb glances back at him, and what catches his eye is not the familiar, gangly, red-haired figure of his therapist, but someone taller, a flash of pink and green, wise bovine eyes. Caleb whips around fully, pulse racing, but it’s just regular Caduceus Clay standing there, a knowing half-smile on his face. “What did you say?” manages Caleb.

“When we first met, didn’t I tell you there was a destiny in your path?”

“I don’t remember that,” says Caleb hoarsely, heart still pounding. “And I have a very good memory.”

Untroubled as still water, Caduceus shrugs. “Must have been another life, then.”

He walks out with Caleb to the front of the building, where Jester waits by Caleb’s car in the bright sunshine. When she sees Caleb, she smiles and waves, dressed in a navy-blue skirt and white blouse. “Ready to go?” she calls up at him.

“Ja,” says Caleb, trotting down the stairs to join her. As he slides into the driver’s seat, he glances out the window at Caduceus, half-hoping, half-dreading another glimpse of the pink-haired apparition. Caduceus looks the same, though, his hands in the pockets of his baggy hemp pants, and a smile curling the edges of his lips.

“Caleb?” says Jester. “What is it?”

Taking a deep breath, Caleb nods at Caduceus and turns to the front of the car, turning the keys in the engine. “Nothing,” he says. “Let’s go.” And he peels out of the parking lot, Jester laughing and throwing her hands up through the open sunroof, and out onto the road to the unknown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for reading. 💙🧡


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